System Reserved partition is missing, but WIndows 7 Pro works fine

mpaniak · 16 Feb 2012

I have a Windows 7 Professional system that I went to take an image of using EASEUS TODO Workstation. When I went to do the backup, I noticed that there was no 100 MB System Reserved Partition. I made the image anyway.

When I tested the image on a new machine, it prompted me to repair or start windows normally. Unable to start normally, so I did the repair. After about 10 min, the system came back and said it cannot repair.

Outside of start a system from scratch, is there a way I can get the system reserved partition out of the Windows 7 partition?

Thanks,
Michael

ignatzatsonic · 16 Feb 2012

If your original Professional system did not have a System Reserved partition, any image of it will not have the partition either. That image should still restore to the original PC properly and be bootable.

The System Reserved partition is not necessary. I have never had one.

Something else is going on.

You say you "tested the image on a new machine". That's probably the problem. Images are intended to be restored to the machine from which they were made, not to "a new machine".

Kaktussoft · 16 Feb 2012

100MB system reserved partition isn't needed at all!! It's only needed if you use bitlocker. Or you can use that special partition as boot partition. So that's not a problem at all.

Is the partition with windows an primary partition?
Is the partition active?
how many partitions are on that disk?

If you don't know how to find that information... please let me know.

Kaktussoft · 16 Feb 2012

mpaniak said:

When I tested the image on a new machine, it prompted me to repair or start windows normally. Unable to start normally, so I did the repair. After about 10 min, the system came back and said it cannot repair.

Try the startup repair again and do it at least 3 times. Reboot in between.
startup repair fixes one problem at a time!!

gregrocker · 16 Feb 2012

To review, you must mark the Win7 partition Active: Partition - Mark as Active (Method Two)

Then you must run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times until Win7 starts and holds the System Active flags.

Don't delete the 100mb partition until this is complete as there are rare cases where it will not yield the System Boot files to Win7.

But I would leave it as it is because 100mb isn't worth the trouble to recover and there is no real downside.

wanchoo · 17 Feb 2012

If the System Reserved Partition is not there but the system is working fine then you have no problem to worry about. Just leave things as they are. As already explained by ignatzatsonic it is not always necessary that it should be there. Its existence or non-existence depends on how Windows 7 is installed.

I don't have it either like ignatzatsonic and I went out of my way to install Windows 7 in the way that it was not created.