Jumanji, why do you think are there Active flags on his two otherwise-correct UEFI installs to GPT hard drives?
I have never seen any partition marked Active on a GPT disk and thought it is not even possible to have Active flag on GPT disks since there is no MBR
Last edited by gregrocker; 09 Jan 2015 at 13:31.
Number one: I have no exposure to UEFI ( save for the two Windows 8.1 preinstalled HP Laptops that were dropped on me for the initial setup months ago) I just played with those for a while getting in and out of the secure boot and legacy mode.
Number Two: I haven't seen or handled an SSD and therefore do not know in what factory formatted condition it comes whether GPT or MBR..
With that preamble, I guess guess guess when one installs Windows 7 on an MBR disk or GPT disk the usual 100MB System Reserved Partition will always be marked active. So may be we shouldn't bother about it or look at it suspiciously.:)
But what is bothersome when I look into the Seller's install is that, the 128MB MSR partition appears first, followed by the 100MB System Reserved partition. Microsoft requires that the MSR partition should always precede the first primary partition - whether it is a system partition or data partition.
Every GPT disk must contain an MSR. The order of partitions on the disk should be ESP (if any), OEM (if any) and MSR followed by primary data partition(s). It is particularly important that the MSR be created before other primary data partitions.
In that respect ICit2's install meets the Microsoft requirement.
In my opinion, seller's installation may fail to boot forever under certain circumstances.
My question now is if ICit2 wants to have Windows 7 why not he get into legacy mode and install Windows on an MBR disk? Or is that activation code work only with the UEFI install?
Well, there was some communication gap or misunderstanding when greg was trying to pull me into the other thread and me stubbornly refusing and sticking to this thread answering your query on what is that odd partition and limiting myself to that.:)
The same license can be activated on either UEFI or Legacy installs.
The presence of the MSR and EFI partitions mean it's a UEFI install to GPT disk which cannot have an Active partition. Yet PW shows one, while Disk Mgmt doesn't. It is rare the PW misreports. It might be behind in its accuracy for all UEFI installs.
I am sorry Jumanji if you felt pressured to comment at all. I am always hoping for more colleagues to share knowledge and help handle the tremendous partitioning caseload we get here. This is the only site on the web that walks users through complicated partitioning operations - thousands of them since beta without a single failure.
It`s a 232 GB drive, convert it to MBR and re install windows John. No reason for a drive that small to be GPT.
As long as the bios has a Lecacy boot option, you`re all set.
What version is PW?
I always tend to fall back on Diskpart for the definitive answer.
Command Prompt (Admin)
Diskpart
lis dis
sel dis 0
det dis
sel vol # - the ones you want to investigate, repeat the focus on the vols in question.
det vol
det par
exit
It's beyond the scope of this post to describe all of the attribute value pairs. Most will be obvious, but you might have to research the ones that aren't.
A Description of the Diskpart Command-Line Utility
DiskPart
DiskPart Command-Line Options
Be mindful of the references, there have been some additions to Diskpart that might not be applicable to Windows 7.
Sorry - I don't remember what they are, but the documentation should tell you.
Bill
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I agree, use diskpart or even partition wizard boot cd to setup those ssd`s, create partitions on them for windows, use the whole drive for windows, no SR partition needed SSD`s are small enough.
use diskpart to convert the drives to MBR.
Boot to the W7 DVD option 2 step 2
Convert GPT Disk to MBR Disk
Don`t forget to run the clean command to wipe out all the partitions.
SSD Alignment
Yep the initial install was done on a wiped drive and for all I can remember it was unallocated space, and the second drive I just stuck it in as new I didn't do anything with it as I used to run Wolfgang's "clean to active" tutorial in preparing SSD's but remember doing it once and ending up with two 100MB partitions which I didn't find until I had installed, and then didn't know what to do with them.
That was early on in building and I really did not have much idea about such stuff - not that I have that much now and should get into understanding partitions as I still am mystified as to why they are needed. I have to admit in my tiny mind it is all just data recorded on a flat spinning surface, and I don't see why things like the MBR is needed to be separate from the rest of the other partition/s.
It doesn`t need to be separate, my installs are on 1 partition, I stopped using the SR partition a long long time ago.
Last edited by AddRAM; 22 Apr 2015 at 17:47.
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