Solved to system partition or not to system partition

[supernova777]

Hi People
just wondering if someone can explain to me how i can force windows to install its system partition on install. I have two machines, one AMD powered and one Intel powered.. on the AMD machine windows 7 installed flawlessly and quickly from my thumbdrive.. on the intel.. nothing but nightmares so far its taken hours.. i had it all installed perfectly and i had already installed all my apps and i rebooted and then it failed to see the drive and wouldnt boot. i ran system recovery and it told me because there was no system partition but the thing is , on the install on the AMD machine that went beautifully windows came up and said "Windows may create other partition.." blah blah ... what is the difference.. how come there is no asking of questions in regard to this when installing sometimes??? i was trying to make it do this when i installed.. and im about to try again this very second but if anyone knows what the deciding factor is for windows in how it chooses whether or not to do this.. i mean i just ran diskpart by pressing shift-f10 while the install was loading (thanks for teaching me that cool trick sevenforums members and i did a CLEAN on the drive.. which is an SSD OCZ Vertex 2 60gb btw... im going to try to select the disk unpartitioned now in the hopes that windows will 'do the right thing' heh.. Im pretty sure this is what i did last time, except for the fact that i deleted the partition with the installer advanced options that time, and didnt "CLEAN" it.. but in my mind theres little difference.. anyone able to clear this up for me?? i love windows 7 but its things like this that really get me dissappointed in Microsoft. Just the way they decide to do things, and to not document fully all the possible outcomes of a process.. retarded.

 

[supernova777]

another thing to note is that i was using both the same type of hard drives. the OCZ vertex 2 60GB.. in both instances in both computers here, i just had the thought, is it a possibility that the Bios setting of the sata drive has something to do with whether or not the win7 installer chooses to create teh system partition? ie: IDE mode, AHCI mode vs RAID mode..

also of note, im installing windows 7 64bit..

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello supernova777.



Basically one will get the new Windows 7 "System Reserved" partition whenever you install to a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) that has never been installed to or that is listed/seen as "unallocated space" by the Windows 7 installer, the latter is achieved with 'used' HDD/SSD(s) by running either the clean or the clean all command from a command line before the installation process.

Another aspect a lot of users don't comprehend; if "Drive Options (advanced)" of the Windows 7 installer is used to delete/recreate/format an existing Windows 7/SysResv partition(s) during the installation process in an attempt to not recreate the SysResv partition it will still be recreated.

The same diskpart session can be used to create the SysResv partition to any HDD/SSD as outlined in Step Two #3 of this tutorial at the link below.

SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation


There are also methods to create the SysResv partition after Windows 7 has been installed, have a look at these tutorials and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.

System Reserved : Create Using Disk Management

System Reserved : Create for Dual Boot

 

[supernova777]

interesting. ok, I've got my system up and functioning fine now. After running CLEAN on the drive before installing, and putting the controller into AHCI mode.

 

[supernova777]

ok ive actually got a problem again, my computer is rebooting just after the "starting windows" screen with the animation appears... asus p5b deluxe board.. e6600 intel chip.. 2 raids for storage on intel chipset, ive unplugged the PATA devices frm the Jmicron controller. Im wondering if its because its meant to have the boot drive on the 1 Sata port that is connected to the Jmicron controller.. as im selecting F8, and choosing my OCZ ssd, but it was tring to boot from the dvd drive, and one PATA hard drive that i connected.. before i tried connecting the PATA hard drive there was no problem, now ive disconnected it and i cant even boot up. I cant believe how much trouble im having with this as before i had 2 OCZ vertex 2 in RAID formation on the Intel chipset on this same board and i had ZERO problems..

ive run start up recovery already and it did nothing but ask me if i want to restore from a system restore point??? i dont get it..

ok tried reconnecting it to the SATA RAID port on the jmicron controller on my board.. and no deals. same thing. reboots in 'starting windows' animation before th balls even come together to form the windows logo.. WTF!!!
id really like to avoid reinstalling again, and this time the system partition is there, i know, i checked, system was working fine, i dont get ittttttt

 

[supernova777]

my only guess as to whats going on here in this scenario is that the drive that i connected to the PATA interface.. was 1 of 2 dynamic disks that im trying to get the data off so i can wipe them.. and ive read that each dynamic disk keeps information at the end of the partition about all the other disks in the system?? could it be that this somehow changed my setup simply by trying to boot up with it connected ONCE? its no longer connected..

i just ran set up and got in and pressed shift-f10 to bring up cmd.. and then i checked the drives and my drive letters have all changed.. my boot drive is now drive F for some reason.. i guess this could be my problem:?

 

[supernova777]

GRRRRRRRRREAT i just ran windows start up recovery and now it says BOOTMGR is missing. this is getting worse and worse

 

[supernova777]

downloading a 64bit windows 7 recovery disc image.. hoping it will save my neck as i got messages in the cmd prompt saying i needed the proper version of windows to do what i was trying to do (bcdedit)

btw i got my drive back to C: frm F: it seems the intel gets stacked in front of the jmicron after all (on the p5b deluxe asus board)

 

[supernova777]

i have no idea what to do other then to reinstall again.. i have burned the 64 bit recovery disk on my other pc and booted with it, repaired.. and hoped it woudl work fine and it doesnt.. same problem as before -- windows doesnt start up.. it reboots thecomptuer right after the windows is starting screen(

anyone?? please help
i cant believe this is happening to me, this is embarassing. this never happens tome.. what the hell is going on? im like a newb.. :/

 

[supernova777]

its gotta be some kind of hardware thing, because this doesnt happen to me ever.. i cant take the wrap on this one. its either windows or the ocz disk.. somethings gotta give

 

[supernova777]

ok i started up in safe mode and it seems to be crashing at classpnp.sys>??

 

[fseal]

It's begining to sound like there is a problem with the drive :/

But, to simplify things when you do clean installs, unhook all other hard drives including any cards stuck in card readers or thumb drives. That can cause stupid install error messages or funky drive letter assignments.

But when it syas there is no "system partition" it's talking about the windows root/boot partition (Not the 100 Meg system reserved partition). If you did a clean install and then rebooting gives you that error, it's either the BIOS not finding the drive you just installed onto, or somehow the drive is not in the BIOS "boot sequence". Or it's a bad cable, flakey power, bad drive or something like that.

I'd try to start from scratch. Unkook all other drives, look at the motherboard manual and find out what is sata controller #1 and plug the drive into that (Don't use any specialised ones like the marvell controller, just the standard intel one). Make sure in the BIOS that the drive shows on on boot and that it is selected first in the boot order, DVD drive second. Then reinstall clean (Besure to delete and recreate the partition when reinstalling).

Then after thats done if there is still more random flakiness then it's some kind of hardware issue :/ Besides what I meantioned above it could also be the MB or power supply when all is said and done (I just had a total nightmare PSU issue that took days to wade through).

 

[supernova777]

i was able to get into safe mode after changing my set up back to AHCI and windows boots as well normally .. GREAT now i cant turn on my RAID DRIVES.. this is beyond wack. I suppose i have to reinstall once again in RAID mode on my intel controller.. I cant beleive this.. im assuming because i installed in AHCI mode its only working now in AHCI mode.
so im booted up right now looking at my system. but, i cant enable any of my raid drives which have 90% of my data. LOL what a day what a day.

 

[supernova777]

is there a page i can check to fully understand what differences are happening in the bios when changing between AHCI and IDE and RAID..??? I dont really understand what achi is other then it stands for Advanched host controller interface?? as far as i know i think it enables hot swapping of sata drives??? i think i read something to that effect anyway..i had no idea that it could have this osrt of impact on whether or not my system is startable.. wow

 

[supernova777]

am now reinstalling win7 64 bit, this time i made sure both my controllers are in raid mode, and i loaded the intel RAID/AHCI driver from usb disk during install. hoping that will make a big difference???

something tells me ill be reinstalling on my amd box too because im not sure if its set up in raid mode already, and if this is the reason for all my trouble today then id probably have the same thing happen to me when i try to install a raid on that box.. ugh

 

[Wishmaster]

Do you have 2 Vertex Drives you are trying to RAID? Or a single Vertex for the OS, and trying to RAID other drives along side it?

If a single SSD, Set it to ACHI, and as already suggested, disconnect all drives except the Vertex.

Make sure it is plugged into SATA Port 0 (or the very first 1)

Do the clean cmd, and install Windows.

Once you get windows up and running, then set up the raid on the other drives.

 

[supernova777]

hi wishmaster, i do have 2 ocz vertex ssds. i had them installed as raid before and had no problem at all.
but ive now split them apart and using them on the individual boxes singularly. and now im running into these problems on only one of the boxes.. my intel box. the amd installed fine and seems to be solid in its stability by comparison.

i was able to install fine when ihad the drive set up as AHCI as u just indicated... but there is 6 sata ports and i have only one setting for all of them i believe. i cant set up one of them as ahci and the rest as raid?? or can i?

 

[Mike Connor]

If you change your BIOS drive settings you will have big problems!

You CAN change from AHCI mode to IDE without a problem, but other changes will cause you a lot of headaches.

There is a trick to changing IDE to/or back to AHCI

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci

set "Start" to 0 .

Re-boot and set BIOS to AHCI.

Once the machine is running install the original AHCI driver. You may also have to alter the "BOOT order" of your discs in the BIOS if the machine fails to boot.

It is not normally possible to install a RAID configuration after an OS installation, ( although it will work on some Gigabyte boards, these boards also allow "mixed operation" of types, and later RAID additions).

Further information;

How to recover a RAID 0 disk array after losing the array

For data recovery;

FREE Freeware Data Recovery Software Full Versions

Regards....Mike Connor

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

 

[gregrocker]

Please post back a screenshot of your maximized Disk Mgmt drive map with listings, using Snipping Tool in Start Menu. Tell us what is on each partition.

Be aware that we see a steady stream of RAID install problems here. Better to install to a single HD plugged to SATA1 and use other HD's for storage unless you know that you can improve performance on Win7 with RAID - as most report no performance increase, and no real redundancy since you can lose everything with one HD fail in many RAIDs. Win7 built-in drive imaging is better redundancy.