Hacking W7 OS to tweak F11 behavior

Doing so will free a Primary that I could assign to the RECOVERY partition !? yes ?

Not easily. The Recovery partition is a logical drive inside an extended partition.

You can have 3 primary and one extended. I can only see 2 mounted primary in your screenshot - the other has no drive letter and shows as 0mb

You would need to move that recovery logical drive to one end of the extended partition, before it can be converted to primary.

3rd party Partition managers can do this kind of thing, but it means moving a lot of data.

What is that top primary listed as 0mb with no drive letter?

You will have to provide a better screenshot - showing ALL partitions in bottom pane layout.

Also provide a screenshot using diskgenius or any other 3rd party partition manager.

The bcd entries examples:


Ramdisk: (wim file)





Partition: (Operating system)

You need a RAMDISK entry for the recovery. It should point at the boot.sdi file on the recovery partition, and the bootable wim file on the recovery partition.

A Partition entry is for an already installed windows.

On your other thread, you listed the contents of the recovery partition as follows:

Code:

"D:\Recovery\system32\Recovery\ReAgent.xml"
"D:\Recovery\WindowsRE\winre.wim" (271M, 1 partition)
"D:\Recovery\WindowsRE\boot.sdi"
"D:\boot\BCD"..... the recovery boot file
"D:\boot\boot.sdi"
"D:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD"
"D:\EFI\Microsoft\Recovery\BCD"
"D:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi"
"D:\system.sav\preload\base.wim" (3.2G, 4 partitions)
"D:\system.sav\FactoryUpdate\boot.wim" (246M, 1 partition)
"D:\system.sav\FactoryUpdate\BOOT.SDI"

Now you have moved the recovery partition - you say it has letter H.

Now you have this:

"H:\Recovery\system32\Recovery\ReAgent.xml"
"H:\Recovery\WindowsRE\winre.wim"
"H:\Recovery\WindowsRE\boot.sdi"
"H:\boot\BCD"
"H:\boot\boot.sdi"
"H:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD"
"H:\EFI\Microsoft\Recovery\BCD"
"H:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi"
"H:\system.sav\preload\base.wim"
"H:\system.sav\FactoryUpdate\boot.wim"
"H:\system.sav\FactoryUpdate\BOOT.SDI"


Is there a bootmgr on partition H ?

If you want to use H as the Active, system partition - you need bootmgr on the root.

H:\bootmgr

bootmgr will try and read the entries from the bcd store on the Active, system partition

H:\boot\bcd

You will need bcd entries pointing at

1. Your windows partition ( so that you can boot into windows on partition C )

Type: Put a dot in Partition
Disk: Should be the Hard Disk in the top dropdown
Partition: Should be partition C in the next dropdown
File: nothing here
SDI File: nothing here

OS Title: Windows 7
Boot File: \windows\system32\winload.exe

Sys Root: \Windows
Language: fr-FR

Detect Hal should be ticked. Winpe should not be ticked

Click SAVE current system

AND

2. A ramdisk entry ( so you can start the recovery process)


Type: Put a dot in Ramdisk
Disk: Should be the Hard Disk in the top dropdown
Partition: Should be partition H in the next dropdown

FILE: \Recovery\WindowsRE\winre.wim
SDI FILE: \Recovery\WindowsRE\boot.sdi

TITLE: Whatever you want - HP Recovery is fine
Boot File: \Windows\System32\Boot\winload.exe
Sys Root: \Windows
Language: fr-FR

Detect Hal and Winpe should both be ticked

Click SAVE current system

BootIce.zip