unstable system configuration after clean OEM reinstall Windows 7 Pro

Your partitions look fine to me, same labelling of Active, System and Boot as mine, both in Disk Management and in Partition Wizard. It's certainly a bit confusing that PW reverses the Windows partition labelling for both System and Boot but that's the way it is though imo it's rather more sensible than the Windows labelling.

Anyway you are good to go.

Looks correct to me, although I don't know if Dell bootable Diagnostics will boot if you reimage it since it may have lost its hotlink. SIW2 might help you restore that.

How is performance? No hangs, freezes or bogs? If not then I'd try using MSE instead of Kapersky. Just the fact that it has an uninstall tool may mean its too bloated to support the kind of performance MSE does: http://support.kaspersky.com/common/...e.aspx?el=1464

Thank you, BJB and gregrocker, for the speedy re-assurance that the current setup is good (and I don't have to do a third re-install). I was using XP and had already purchased Kaspersky so the license is still good for awhile. Sorry, I'm not experienced with computer terms...what is MSE and where to download? and yes, I will post for SIW2's help restore the Dell utility if it doesn't work. Could you also address the question whether System Reserved portion is actually be accessed by the OS? Many thanks!

The Boot and Active flags on System Reserved in Partition Wizard signify that it is booting the OS on C. In Disk Mgmt the Boot and System flags are reversed so it should read System Active. They mean the same thing though.

I'm surprised you didn't see MSE in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 along with everything else that works best for Win7 in tens of thousands of installs we've helped do here.

The System Reserved partition contains the Windows boot files, and passes control to the Windows C partition. It is also used to support Bitlocker drive encryption and also the Recovery Environment through which Windows can attempt to fix boot issues and also provides tools for the user to do so.

I'm a little surprised that you have a System Reserved partition as it is normally only created when Windows is clean installed to an unpartitioned drive.

I was about to check for new replies when I got 2 crash dumps and "blue screen errors" (I couldn't find the XML file listed in the error message I saved into the attached notepad file ---there are two dump files but cannot attach here).

2014May26 - bluescreen crash dump.txt.

For both times, it seems to be related to sudden power spike...1st time, I was opening the laptop screen and had knocked loose the power plug and 2nd time I was plugging in the USB3.0 ethernet adapter into an USB 3.0 hub. The laptop is now plugged to a powerstrip with surge-protector. Please let me know if you find anything useful from the error message.

After several rebooting to make sure the laptop was still running okay, I then rebooted to F12 menu and was able to run the Dell bootable Diagnostics partition- passed all tests ("Pass PSA V4216 ePSA extended test pass") and booted back normally afterwards. Next, I will check into MS Essentials along with items listed in your "Clean Up Factory Bloatware" tutorial, gregrocker.

As for having a System Reserve partition, I purposely created/formatted it (with recommended larger size per step 3 of tutorial "Windows 7: SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Re-installation") and the primary partition for the Windows 7, using MiniToolPW8 (instead of diskpart) before running the reinstallation USB.

As share earlier, the partition is there but whether or not it's actually functioning is still questionable to me due to the very condition you have pointed out, BJB, and additionally, the Macrium image of the original System Recovery partition is about 7GB (the actual partition was 15-16GB ---- could there had been bloatware in there as well?) whereas the current partition is only using about 38MB of the 204MB. Is that Macrium image worth keeping for restoring purpose at later date? (Yes, I realize now that it cannot be used to restore to the current 204MB partition).

I explained in detail earlier that there is no question System Reserved is booting your Win7 as signified by the presence of the Boot and Active flags in Partition Wizard, which would be the System and Active flags in Disk Mgmt. You can confirm this in Disk Mgmt now.

All that is expected to be seen in System Reserved is the 38mb you see, although there is a hidden Page File which can expand more when Win7 backup images are created. If System Reserved is ever given a letter and has anything accidentally written to it this can result in it becoming too full and failing to create further Win7 backup images. We saw this issue some years ago which is why the tutorial you followed recommended 200mb for making your own System Reserved.

It is good to know your Dell Diagnostics will boot after being reimaged. Nice work on that.

Twice I also referred to the steps in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 you said you followed to remind you that MSE as well as everything else that works best is given there along with detailed explanations of them all. So I don't know why you say instead you'll be following Clean Up Factory Bloatware which does not apply here if you in fact did a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Thanks for your patience, the further details helps a lot and continuing with the rest of the "Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7" tutorial is a given. Appreciate everyone's speedy help!...closing this thread.