How do I recreate a System Reserved Partition?

gregrocker said:

You've been given several good suggestions. If you have any problems doing the Partition - Mark as Active to run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times on either C or a SysReserved partition you Create Primary, please boot free Partition Wizard CD to take a picture of the full drive map and listings and post it back attaching picture using paper clip in Reply Box. We can normally spot the problem, like a Logical partition which needs to be converted to Primary first.

Burn PW CD ISO to disk using WIndows Image Burner. It can also be used to shrink to create SySReserved, Create and Format NTFS, Mark Active, and an interim step before repairs to highlight the disk # to Rebuild MBR from Disk tab which might preclude the need for the repairs.

Thanks for the suggestions. Partition Wizard is what I used to delete the System Partition, which is likely the cause of my problem. I also used it to change some drive letter assignments, but I don't remember the original assignments. Startup Repair couldn’t repair anything, but its diagnosis said the System Disk = Harddisk2 and that the Windows directory = E:\Windows, but the System resides on C:, which, according to PW, is disk 5. Maybe there is a registry tweak that will let me correct those. I’ve included a picture of PW’s take on my disks. Some comments:
Disk 1 (J:Win7Boot) is the 250GB SSD that won’t boot.
Disk 2 (F:WD ScorpioBlack 320GB) is an old HDD holding backups of backups.
Disk 3 (Data WD Black 2TB) is my main data HDD. Docs. Pictures, videos, etc.
Disk 4 (C:Win7 Boot) is the 120GB SSD I’m currently booting from. Most apps live here too.
Disk 5 (E: Backup Hitachi 3TB) is now for backups. Used to have 3 partitions, 2 of which I purposely created: a 2TB chunk for data now residing on Disk 3, a new TB drive), and a 1 TB piece for backups (always filling up). After I got Partition Wizard I discovered a 3rd 100MB partition at the beginning. I guess I should have left it alone; this was the system reserved partition I deleted with PW.
Disks 6 – 8 are more data disks (7&8 are external).
Even though I’ve gathered everything for a clean installation, I’m going to try your approach first. Maybe I can learn something. If it doesn’t work I can use the clean install as plan B. BUT I don't quite understand your last instruction regarding using PW to "to shrink to create SySReserved, Create and Format NTFS, Mark Active, and an interim step before repairs to highlight the disk # to Rebuild MBR from Disk tab". It sounds like I shrink the single partition on Disk 1 to make room for system stuff, but I don't understand the rest of the stuff. Sorry to be so obtuse

. I'm trying. Thanks for any help you can render.

Disk 4 is booting the System as signified by System (in Disk Mgmt, Boot in PW), Active flags. Disk0 has no System flag so cannot boot itself until it does.

There's no real reason to create a System Reserved partition unless Repairs don't work. Just unplug all other hard drives except Disk0, run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times. If using Partition Wizard then before running the repairs highlight the disk, from Disk tab run Rebuild MBR which may be enough.

When you plug back in the other drives make sure Disk0 remains first HD to boot in BIOS setup. Trigger your other SSD to boot if needed by using the one-time BIOS Boot menu key to choose it.

gregrocker said:

Disk 4 is booting the System as signified by System (in Disk Mgmt, Boot in PW), Active flags. Disk0 has no System flag so cannot boot itself until it does.

There's no real reason to create a System Reserved partition unless Repairs don't work. Just unplug all other hard drives except Disk0, run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times. If using Partition Wizard then before running the repairs highlight the disk, from Disk tab run Rebuild MBR which may be enough.

When you plug back in the other drives make sure Disk0 remains first HD to boot in BIOS setup. Trigger your other SSD to boot if needed by using the one-time BIOS Boot menu key to choose it.

I unplugged all other drives except Disk0 (after I got past the confusion from PW disk numbering starting at 1 and Windows Disk Management starting at 0). We do that because it's easier and more fail safe than setting any other active drives to inactive, right?

I first tried it with the original Windows installation disk, but that yielded a message saying "This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you're trying to repair". I used the 64-bit install disk & that is what I have installed. Next I tried a repair disk. That let me proceed to Startup Repair, but when it looked for installed systems to repair, it only found what it thought was Windows XP (see figure). The only drives connected were the SSD with Win7 on it and the DVD Repair Disk. I searched both for "Windows XP", but didn't find anything it looked like I could change (or even anything that looked (to me) like it might be connected to the problem). Same thing with the registry. XP only appeared there in conjunction with XPS or srvsvc.dll.

I ran Startup repair anyway (4 times since the link you provided said "at least 3 times" to no avail.

Do you have any suggestions?

I decided to go for the clean install. I spent more time trying to avoid it than it took to do it. But it wasn't wasted time because I learned a lot. I probably seem pretty uninformed to you guys, but a lot of even more uninformed people rely on me to keep their system working and explain things to them. I think I could have eventually solved it with more discussion, but I can't afford any more time on it. Thanks to you guys, I (finally) switched from IDE to AHCI and I did a clean install using the downloaded Win7 SP1 iso and my Win7 upgrade disk. I used UEFI and opted to keep the System Reserved Partition (which I now understand MUCH better thanks to you). Thanks especially to gregrocker and Barman58. I appreciate not only your instruction, hints and suggestions, but the tutorials you recommended. I'm marking this one solved.

Glad to hear it.

Did you figure out why XP was listed as found OS in Win7 repair? Had XP been on the drive and not correctly had its partition deleted?

Did you wipe HD first before reinstall?

Let us know how performance goes. Should be perfect if you stick with tools and methods in Reinstall tutorial.

re did I figure out why XP was listed as found OS in Windows Repair. Not exactly. I wanted to explore that, but couldn't afford any more time for it. It is related to the fact that I originally had XP installed on a regular hard drive and then installed Windows 7 on that same drive. I didn't like XP being the default OS (I had to hang around to choose Win7 after power-on), so I used Easy-BCD to change the default without knowing a lot about what or where BCD was. Later I got rid of XP (probably just deleted it while running Win7, but I don't recall for sure). Let my antivirus sw lapse for 3 days and Murphy's Law ensured that I got a rootkit virus in that period. Got rid of it but must have had vestiges that caused other boot prblms. A long call with Microsoft support ended with a support tech making a registry change that made the computer unbootable ("sorry about that. Is there anything else I can help you with?"). Tried to reinstall Win7 but couldn't because XP not there. Called Microsoft again and they helped me (I'm sure it was the same technique I learned here). I installed Win 7 on a new drive (HDD). Then I built a new rig and moved Win7 to a SSD. New drives & new partitions were added and new drive letter assignments made. The System Reserve Partition somehow survived all that and did not live on the same drive as the OS. I can (now) sort of understand how that could lead to my problem. But to the best of my recollection, no OS has ever lived on that 3TB Hitachi drive. I got it specifically for data. Since I always keep my OS (& most apps) on a separate drive than my data, I would not install an OS on a drive that size. So how did the System Reserved Partition get on that drive? It could have been some of the mucking around I did with Easy BCD. I guess that's the danger of making some things easy.

gregrocker said:

Glad to hear it.

Did you figure out why XP was listed as found OS in Win7 repair? Had XP been on the drive and not correctly had its partition deleted?

Did you wipe HD first before reinstall?

Let us know how performance goes. Should be perfect if you stick with tools and methods in Reinstall tutorial.

I am a little disappointed in performance. It takes about a minute to boot (How easily we get spoiled! A whole minute!). About 15 seconds to the Windows logo and another 50 seconds to where I can actually do something. It takes a second or so for Fences and some other startup apps that I'm OK with to start. I haven't checked Startup yet to see if there are things I need to stop. Websites also seem a little sluggish in IE11. There's no reason I know of to expect the 250GB Crucial SSD to be noticeably faster than the 128 GB Corsair Force 3 SSD, but I though a fresh install might speed things up a little. I also read that AHCI would give about a 10% improvement over IDE, but boot-up time is the same as near as I can tell.

I didn't "wipe" the SSD before install - I just (quick) formatted it. Would that make a difference?

You may have weird boot code which would produce that repair result which is why I suggested wiping the HD - the whole point of the reinstall.

If you have a bunch of crap starting with Win7 then you're also not following the tutorial which has helped a million users get a perfect install. You don't need anything except AV and sync starting with Windows