Windows 7: Serious help needed

Over the past couple of days i've had a serious issue regarding boot up and slao an extraa 200mb partition that is non existant. Two days ago I was unable to boot up because it kept sticking just before the windows starting screen. Upon a fresh install i noticed that there were partitions (extra 2) which i had not created. I delete said partitions so I have one remaining. It saiys unallocated vol 0. So I press next for install and all goes well, installs fine blah blah. Ive done this several times now but after about the sixth boot it will stick. Now each and every time i go for fresh install the 200mb partition is back????? WTF. Any way I have checked disk management out and it is also there. I cant do nothing with it though because it wont let me. I've changed drives but to no avail. What is going on. I'm having to do fresh install every day because of this ghost partition which I cant delete. Does any one have any idea whats going on. Ive just installed x32 thinking that would help but...................................HELP!

Windows 7 creates a 200MB partition at the start of drive for the boot data. Its normal.

Hi Win 7 x64 and welcome to the forum!

scaramonga is correct, this is normal.

If you want to avoid the creation of the 200MB partition, you have to pre-format the drive where you want to install the OS to NTFS and make sure that there's no unallocated space.

The reason why Windows 7 creates that partition is for the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). This partition holds system files and bootable files essential to boot the Windows 7 properly if you needed to do recovery on the system due to corruption.

Cheers

I think the most complete defination for 200 Mb is given in short lines by NosferatuX.

Thanx

I'm not saying that it doesnt have *something* to do with the recovery environment but the .wim files for that do not reside on the 200MB system partition. They are in a subdirectory of the Windows directory on the main partition. I've heard it said that the 200MB partition was there more to foil several activation cracks than anything else although I cannot seem to find the reference to that now. Anyone remember seeing that?

Please read below for more information:

http://translate.google.com/translat...2F&sl=es&tl=en

Hi baarod,

Though I don't have one of those 200mb partitions, I suspect the related .xml file is located there



SIW2

I see a possible misunderstanding perhaps on your procedure. Maybe this is what is causing you to have extra partitions.

When you reinstall, are you deleting all the partitions and just adding back the one you want? After you set them up, Windows 7 will tell you it is making one for itself, and I don't know what it does if you leave the old 200mb partition on the drive prior to the reinstall.

How did you install a 32bit setup.exe on your 64bit machine... or did I misunderstand what you said?

I have 32bit disc... then got new 64bit machine and too late to download.

Know of anywhere that I cld get the 64bit dwnld????

ladycd