recovery partition as boot or system?

[surati]

Hi
During installation of win8 in a multiboot system (win7+win8+ubuntu) I got a little chaos booting my Dell Computer. So now Im not sure which partition has to be the boot one. At the moment is the recovry partition not hidden and named "boot". I guess it hat to be hidden, but which should be the boot partition?

 

[Ztruker]

Post a snapshot of a fullscreen Disk Management window:

To open Disk Management, press Windows key+r, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter or click GO. Make it full screen.

How to Use the Snipping Tool in Vista - Vista Forums (says it's for Vista but also works with Win 7).

Use the Browse and Attach This File buttons below the text input area while using the Full editor to upload and insert here.

 

[Night Hawk]

The snipping tool is found in Start>All Programs>Accessories and can be pinned to the main taskbar when used a lot. That can come in handy!

Often the hidden recovery partition since 7 will be the boot partition rather then seeing a separate 100mb System Reserved partition created when custom installing 7 on a new drive by itself allowing the 7 drive tools to create and format the new boot as well as C primary.

When going to install 8 after the 7/ubuntu dual boot was already set up the 8 installer likely trashed the Grub mbr entries replacing those with 8's. 8 will have or should automatically added 7 in as a second OS while ignoring ubuntu. That's if Grub not the Wubi boot loader was in use. The Win+r key combination brings up the prompt for the Start>Run command line where you can also type the diskmgmt.msc command.

 

[surati]

Thanks for the clear information!
I uninstalled win8 (deleted it´s partition)but still, grub shows win8 in the start-menue. How can I solve this problem? Somehow I have to "clean" mbr from win8, no?

 

[gregrocker]

You have the System boot files on C as signfiied by the System flag shown there. I don't know why the Active flag is now on Recovery. I would move the Active flag to C since it belongs there now on the System partition.

What remains to be seen is if the Dell bootable Diagnostics will now run from the OEM partition, and Recovery will run from its partition. You can try running Diagnostics and queuing up Recovery to see.
Dell Diagnostics Utility - How to Run the
Dell Windows 7 PC Restore

If not then you can delete both of those partitions to resize C into the space using Partition Wizard Resize Partition -- Video Help. . You would want to get the vastly superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 anyway instead of Recovery.

Since you have two HD's you should contain all Linux on the secondary HD booted via the BIOS one-time Boot Menu key, not impose GRUB on Win7 at all.

 

[Mark Phelps]

Thanks for the clear information!
I uninstalled win8 (deleted it´s partition)but still, grub shows win8 in the start-menue. How can I solve this problem? Somehow I have to "clean" mbr from win8, no?

When you installed Win8, most likely, it wrote its boot loader files into the Win7 partition.

Had you "uninstalled" Win8, those files might have been removed, restoring the Win7 boot -- but just erasing the partition left those files in place.

You would need to restore those files as Win8 uses a different boot loader from Win7.

 

[surati]

When you installed Win8, most likely, it wrote its boot loader files into the Win7 partition.

Had you "uninstalled" Win8, those files might have been removed, restoring the Win7 boot -- but just erasing the partition left those files in place.

You would need to restore those files as Win8 uses a different boot loader from Win7.

So how is it possible to restor the Win7 boot? (so that win8 wo´nt apear in grub´s menue).

What remains to be seen is if the Dell bootable Diagnostics will now run from the OEM partition, and Recovery will run from its partition. You can try running Diagnostics and queuing up Recovery to see.
Dell Diagnostics Utility - How to Run the
Dell Windows 7 PC Restore

Thanks! Dell utillity´s partition functions without any problem, I guess the recovery too (i have seen that the files are still inside and were not overwriten). Can I conclude that Win8 boot manager "implantated" itself in partition OS C?

Since you have two HD's you should contain all Linux on the secondary HD booted via the BIOS one-time Boot Menu key, not impose GRUB on Win7 at all.

That´s a great idea! why I didn´t think about it before.......

 

[gregrocker]

It doesn't matter if Win8 updated the boot files on C, deleting the 8 partition is sufficient.

However C should be marked Active since it's now the System partition. The System partition should always be Active and remain that way unless you deliberately intend to move the System Boot files to another partition.

I would uninstall GRUB from the Win7 HD if it's on it at all. You shouldn't need it to boot Linux on secondary via the BIOS

 

[Night Hawk]

That depends on whether or not the originaly 7 BCD store and boot files were on the 204mb OEM partition which is separate from the Recovery partition. Grub likely ended up on the OEM part at the front of the first drive 7 came preinstalled on. The 8 installer upgraded the mbr and BCD store to 8's while adding 7 in as the second Windows.

For restoring the 7 BCD and mbr entries a 7 repair cd or booting live from a 7 recovery disk live if you have one will allow you to run the Startup repair tool a few times to replace the 8 boot entries. 8 still uses the same type of bootloader as both Vista and 7 but is the newer version. Likewise when removing 7 from a dual boot with Vista you would need to run the Vista Startup repair to replace the 7 mbr and version of BCD store.

With a live ubuntu disk you can browse the partitions on Disk 0 to see just where the Boot folder is located which contains the boot files and BCD store(Boot Configuration Data store). That will need to be marked as the active system since the boot files and boot information are located there. The 7 primary will simply remain as a healthy primary partition.

On other premade systems there is no separate 204mb boot parition where the BCD is located on the hidden recovery partition when found at the front of the drive. Once you boot live from a ubuntu or other distro's cd or dvd like Linux Mint or Puppy Linux this is how the boot partition on a 7 machine will look as far as the folders you will find.

Note this is how that will be named when 7 is custom installed while the 204mb partition has an OEM name to it there.