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#61
Well back to my original post to your problem.
1) Yes it seems peculiar to your HP computer.
2) No Acronis will not fix it because it is not an Acronis problem.
3) MS has provided us with one of the best desktop OSes ever made available.
You speak as if it were something that will have to be done every time you boot. This is a one time fix to a problem that seems unique to your installation.
In the amount of time you have been posting the issue you could have already fixed it six times over.
1. If the Win 7 installer doesn't see any Active partitions already on the HD - it will split the partition you are installing w7 onto - creating the 100mb "System" partition.
To avoid that , partition the HD before installing w7 and mark the partition you are going to install w7 onto as Active.
2. If you already have a 100mb system partition and want to get rid of it :
In Disk Management, give it a drive letter.
In Folder options make sure Hidden files and protected o/s files are showing.
Copy and paste bootmgr and the pale yellow boot folder from 100mb partition onto the 7 partition. ( Skip copying bcd when it tells you it is in use - copy the rest).
Open an elevated cmd prompt and type ( assuming7 drive letter is C)
bcdedit /export C:\Boot\bcd
then press enter.
Mark 7 partition Active and reboot.
7 partition is now the system partition. Do what you like with the 100mb partition. I suggest merging it with a partition manager ( may take a while). You then have one slightly larger 7 partition.
Of course, the start sector is now different - so the bcd entry will not be right (unless your partition manager updates bcd for you). Run startup repair to correct the bcd entry.
Future imaging/restoring of the 7 partition should be fine.
I just added the bit about merging partitions to my previous post - so you may want to look at that. You don't have to do that - but it saves having a 100mb partition hanging around uselessly.
Many Thanks ... I'm trying a fresh install to an Active partition now.
Will mess with the other .. later
To expand that :
If there is another HD with an Active partition - earlier in the BIOS HD boot order, 7 will see that first, of course.
It will install the bootfiles on the first Active partition it comes across. The rest of it will install wherever you pointed it.
If there isn't an Active before ( and including ) the one you pointed it at - then it makes the 100mb one.
It is mainly to help those using bitlocker.
It can be a nuisance though.
You're right. On my laptop I had XP before and I did not get 100mb partition after installing W7.
On my wife's laptop without any other OS I got 100mb partition when I installed W7.
In the past I have ensured that each HDD gets it own bootloader by physically unplugging all drives but the one of concern and forcing a bootloader onto that drive's active partition.
Since I just received, literally 15 minutes ago, a shiny new Caviar Black 640GB from the UPS man I will give changing the HDD boot order in BIOs a try. Seems I had trouble with that in the past but my memory has faded with age.