Solved System reserved on D-drive, Windows on C-drive booboo...

[johnlewismcleod]

I know it's a fairly common rookie mistake, but I'm a plumber by trade and I don't get much experience building PCs...so I apologize for my carelessness, but still hope someone is willing to bail me out with this.

I muffed my image restore attempt after a nearly complete hardware upgrade, and decided to go ahead and reinstall windows and restore files to a clean install, but I left both new SSD disks in when I installed Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.

Now I've got my System reserve on one disk, and my Windows C-drive on another....and I spent many, many hours reloading programs and data to complete the restore before I realized what I had done

My desktop boots fine after stopping and forcing me to choose which "Windows 7" install I want to use during boot up , but I'm hoping one of you all can tell me how to recombine windows on C-drive so it will boot without stalling on "two" Windows installs and make backing up understandable for a simple man like me.

This is a screen shot of what I've got now:

 

[ignatzatsonic]

You don't need system reserved per se, but you do need the files within it.

Notice that system reserved in your pic is marked "system". That indicates that your boot files are in that partition.

You can copy those files to C using this tutorial and application:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/209885-bootmgr-move-c-easybcd.html

After you do that, system reserved would be unneeded (unless you use "BitLocker", unlikely). So you could delete it.

You would need to mark the C partition as "active" after you move the files.

Here's a pic of my Disk Management. Notice I have no system reserved. Notice that C is marked as "system".

 

[johnlewismcleod]

Thanks very much, ignatzatsonic

I used EasyBCD and copied the system section of D-drive to C-drive. I got the message that it was a successful task, but now I can't seem to figure out how to make C-drive "active"...it's still listed as New Volume and not System.

Can anyone tell me how to make it the System drive?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Post a pic of Disk Management.

What choices do you see from the "action" menu and then "all tasks" in Disk Management, AFTER you highlight C?

 

[johnlewismcleod]

Unfortunately it auto-closes the action menus when I pick screen capture, so I can only list the select-able options:

The action tab offers:

Refresh

Rescan disks

Create VHD

Attach VHD

All tasks> Open, Explore, Change letter drive and paths, Shrink volume, and Properties.

Under All tasks there is a listing of Mark partition as active, but it's not select-able.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Unfortunately it auto-closes the action menus when I pick screen capture, so I can only list the select-able options:

The action tab offers:

Refresh

Rescan disks

Create VHD

Attach VHD

All tasks> Open, Explore, Change letter drive and paths, Shrink volume, and Properties.

Under All tasks there is a listing of Mark partition as active, but it's not select-able.

Are you sure this "non-selectable" is AFTER C is highlighted with the mouse.

Pic below shows my menu when I have highlighted my inactive D partition, showing the choice to make it active.

 

[johnlewismcleod]

Yes...very sure.

This is what Disk Management looks like currently:

 

[johnlewismcleod]

Ah-hah!

I just noticed that it is listed as active in the drive info...it's just not tagged as Active like yours is.

Maybe it's already done and I don't need to do anything else but alter the tag discription

Can I do a valid boot test without erasing the original system section on D-drive, or do I need to commit and erase everything from D to know if I've accomplished my goal?

 

[johnlewismcleod]

I do notice that it doesn't list "system" as a current property, though :shock:

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Ah-hah!

I just noticed that it is listed as active in the drive info...it's just not tagged as Active like yours is.

Maybe it's already done and I don't need to do anything else but alter the tag discription

Can I do a valid boot test without erasing the original system section on D-drive, or do I need to commit and erase everything from D to know if I've accomplished my goal?

Are my eyes bad?

Don't I see "active" attached to the C drive in your picture?

Mark System Reserved as inactive and reboot.

Then, disconnect your D drive (pull the cables) and see if you can reboot.

 

[johnlewismcleod]

K...I found a difference in the Securities field of Disk Properties. This is what's listed for D-drive System reserved section I want to delete:

 

[johnlewismcleod]

And this is what's listed in Security permissions for C-drive:

 

[ignatzatsonic]

If you want to find out if your fiddling has worked, try what I said in post 10.

 

[johnlewismcleod]

Ah-hah!

I just noticed that it is listed as active in the drive info...it's just not tagged as Active like yours is.

Maybe it's already done and I don't need to do anything else but alter the tag discription

Can I do a valid boot test without erasing the original system section on D-drive, or do I need to commit and erase everything from D to know if I've accomplished my goal?

Are my eyes bad?

Don't I see "active" attached to the C drive in your picture?

Mark System Reserved as inactive and reboot.

Then, disconnect your D drive (pull the cables) and see if you can reboot.

Nope...your eyes are good, brother. It's my ignorence that's holding us back

 

[johnlewismcleod]

You're a freaking genius!

It worked, and once I rebooted it added "system" as a property to C-drive automatically.

EasyBCD automatically makes the drive it copies system reserved files to active and I missed that when I did the transfer...my sincere apologies

Thanks very much for hanging in there with me, ignatzatsonic...I know it must be annoying as heck to be helping someone who's not carrying their part of the load in the process

I'm fixed!!!

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Good job, carry on.