system reserved HDD

Alston518 said:

Bare Foot Kid said:

Hello Alston518, welcome to Seven Forums!



So we know what we are suggesting for you to do please post a snip of disk management for us to look at; in the Windows start menu right click computer and click manage, in the left pane of the "Computer Management" window that opens click disk management and post a snip of that.


How to Upload and Post a Screenshot and File in Seven Forums

i am not home now, therefore i cannot do this, will have to wait till later, but i am going to try some of the suggestions that i received

Then I suggest you look at THIS before you do.

Your 1TB drive is probably on mobo Port 0 or at a lower port than the 640GB drive. In that case the installer puts the active partition on the first drive it finds - go figure (and possibly hides it). Now you have a variety of options:

1. Move the MBR to the 640GB HDD - there are tuts on this site
2. Install 7 on the 1TB HDD and delete it from the 640 HDD
3. Switch the 640 HDD mobo wire with that of the 1TB wire and reinstall on the 640 HDD

Do you have a partition that is marked as Active on the 1TB drive? Is that a 100MB partition? Have a look in Disk Management.

Bare Foot Kid said:

Alston518 said:

Bare Foot Kid said:

Hello Alston518, welcome to Seven Forums!



So we know what we are suggesting for you to do please post a snip of disk management for us to look at; in the Windows start menu right click computer and click manage, in the left pane of the "Computer Management" window that opens click disk management and post a snip of that.


How to Upload and Post a Screenshot and File in Seven Forums

i am not home now, therefore i cannot do this, will have to wait till later, but i am going to try some of the suggestions that i received

Then I suggest you look at THIS before you do.

I posted instructions for you to see what is marked active.

Hi Alston518,

Bill2, whs and Bare Foot Kid are suggesting the same thing, which I agree with.

It appears that your system reserved, which should be 100MB and holds the OS boot files, somehow got on the 1TB drive while your OS is on the 640GB drive.

BFKs link to another post explains how to do this, the links to the tutorials will explain it even further.


Click on this link to see the original post, below.
Weird 'reboot and select proper boot device' problem!!!

Bare Foot Kid said:

Hello lordbob24, welcome to Seven Forums!

First disconnect all Hard Disk Drives (HDD) except the one Windows is installed to, then boot to diskpart to see if the Windows partition is marked as "Active" if it is then do the 3 separated startup repairs out-lined in this tutorial at the link below.

If not use Step Two # 1 to mark it active then do the startup repairs to get Windows booting again.

Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

click to enlarge
Attachment 116546

See the above post to view the attachment.


Let us know if you have any other questions.

Yes it would, power down the PC and disconnect all the HDD(s) except the one you want to install Windows 7 to and do the 'clean all' then use Step Two #2 to create a single 100GB partition to install Windows 7 to and after Windows is booting good reconnect the other HDD(s) to the motherboard.

If you want to add the "System Reserved" partition use Step Two #3 for the create.


SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

Alston518 said:

i have been looking more and more into this issue. I just started using this computer, so i will not have really anything that i need to back up. Can i just wipe both hdds and start from scratch. Like just delete everything and then re insall windows? Would that be the smart thing to do?

Yes you can do that. I would call it the "brutal way". But why don't you first try to fix it with BFK's tutorials. The advantage is that you will learn something and if it does not work, you can still go the brutal way.

Btw: if you reinstall, you might want to first define an active partition on the disk where you want to install. You can use the bootable Partition Wizard CD for that (Option1, Step2 in the tutorial). Then you install Win7 into that partition and the installer will not define the 100MB partition. Your MBR will then be on this OS partition.