Win 7 Boot Partition WTF

[Perryg114]

Well I just screwed up my Laptop with Acronis. I just backed up C: drive and when I did a restore it took the boot partition as well. What is in the boot partition. Is it just generic drivers and stuff or is it customized by the OS?

What I am going to try next is to restore using the Dell disks and then backup that partition. The hard part is going to be getting Acronis to let me split the backups. When I restore the boot partition it will overwrite the C: partition and on and on into and endless CF loop.

Perry

 

[Snoop]

Not sure exactly what you need here but Acronis would not be my choice. Try Macrium Reflect, its free and It is a much better product than Acronis.

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

 

[ToobsAU]

The "System" partition should be around 100MB and contain the bootloader and a handful of drivers and tools that are presented / available in the pre-boot menu.
The "Boot" partition by Microsofts wording is the one that holds the rest of your OS.

If you've messed up your bootloader / system partition with Acronis you would probably be best off grabbing a copy of the Win7 rescue / recovery disks and using them (and or their recovery console) to wipe out the 100MB partition and rebuild it again.
You can grab the iso's here:- https://neosmart.net/blog/2011/windows-recovery-discs-updated-reinstated/

You'll probably want to hit technet to familiarise yourself with the cli tools DISKPART, BCDEDIT & BOOTMGR to get the job done properly.

 

[Perryg114]

I don't remember this boot partition with my older Win 7 laptops. These were consumer grade laptops. The one I have now is business class.

Perry

 

[ViRGE]

I don't remember this boot partition with my older Win 7 laptops. These were consumer grade laptops. The one I have now is business class.

Perry

It has been present across all editions of Windows since Windows Vista.

 

[Whisper2]

The hard part is going to be getting Acronis to let me split the backups. When I restore the boot partition it will overwrite the C: partition and on and on into and endless CF loop.

Perry

I use Acronis regularly but I run from the install disk. I have never installed the software. When I boot up with the Acronis disk, it gives me a choice of which partitions to install -- just the hidden Windows, the main, or both.

I do not know if it will react the same way because you installed the software.

 

[Bubbaleone]

I don't remember this boot partition with my older Win 7 laptops. These were consumer grade laptops. The one I have now is business class.

Perry

As ViRGE noted; since the release of Windows Vista to the present day, all Windows operating systems that use the default BIOS/MBR (Master Boot Record) partitioning scheme have contained [2] partitions. The "Boot" partition is (normally) assigned drive letter C:\ . When you open Windows Explorer to browse your operating system folders you are looking at the contents of your Boot partition.

The other partition, called the "System Reserved" partition, is not assigned any drive letter. Thus, it isn't visible in Windows Explorer and is called a "Hidden Partition". The System Reserved Partition (see below) contains the Boot Manager and the BCD (Boot Configuration Data). The BCD contains all the information that the Boot Manager uses in order to boot into the Windows operating system.

Windows 7/8 dual-boot configuration, but note that the System Reserved partition has no drive letter:

The problem you've created for yourself was failing to configure Acronis to backup the hidden System Reserved partition. The only way you'll restore your operating system is to get out your Windows 7 installation DVD (if you don't have a copy, ISO download links are HERE) then follow these instructions on How To Rebuild the BCD in Windows. If your laptop doesn't have an optical drive; download the Windows 7 ISO version you need, and then use Josh Cell's excellent WinUSB Maker to easily create a bootable Windows 7 USB flash drive installation.

IMHO, in the future, it will greatly benefit you to read this TechNet article: Understanding Disk Partitions

 

[Perryg114]

Well I have the Dell disks but one I get the BCD rebuilt can I re-image C: and get back to where I was?

Perry

 

[Bubbaleone]

If you use the Dell recovery disks, I believe you'll only end up with the operating system restored the way it was when you first got the laptop. All your programs and personal data will be gone.

If the backup that you restored with Acronis was a backup of your current Windows configuration, rebuild the BCD if you want your operating system just like it was before this catastrophe.

Note that you are only going to download the Windows ISO file, and make a bootable USB flash drive with it, so that you can have access to the Command Prompt and BCDEDIT tool that are only available in the Windows Recovery Environment. You won't be installing Windows with it.

 

[Perryg114]

Well I have a Window 7 install disk as well as the Dell disks if that will work. If I boot to the Win 7 disk I can get to the recovery command prompt?

Perry

 

[Bubbaleone]

EDIT: Lol..guess I was still typing while you were posting. Yes, the Windows install disk is perfect. Just boot to it then select the Repair option (lower left-hand corner) when you get to the Windows install screen.

(second reply to post #8)
There is an alternative if you're not comfortable with command line tools like bcdedit. This method requires temporarily installing Windows 7 (using the bootable USB flash installation you made) on a seperate partition that you create, and then installing EasyBCD on it. To see how that's done, scroll down to Type 3: Re-Creating all Bootloader Files and Settings from Scratch.

Once your original Windows 7 installation was back up and running, you would also install EasyBCD on it, and then follow these instructions to uninstall the temporary Windows (8 or 7) installation: How to Uninstall or Remove Windows 8 From Your Dual-Boot Setup. This would keep your original Windows 7 installation bootable, after you deleted the partition the temporary Windows 7 was installed on.

.

 

[Perryg114]

OK I put in the Win 7 disk and it found the existing installation of Win 7 from the Acronis Restore and it fixed the Boot Manager. Media Center Even Seems to work.

Many Thanks to everyone.

I think I will try Macrium and see how that works. I also need to figure out a way to restore windows 7 systems using WHS the old 32 bit version. I tried this a while back and it did not work. I have another thread about this. Something was keep this laptop from backing up which may have just been that it was not on enough to be backed up.

Perry

 

[SimMike2]

You should have created an image of the entire disk, not just the C: drive, preferably booting directly from the CD. Acronis works fine in my opinion. I could not even create a bootable CD with Macrium.

 

[Perryg114]

I am still playing with Acronis. I don't want to backup the entire disk because I want to partition the bulk of it to D: for data storage so I don't have to image 750G of data to get 100G worth of OS backed up.

Perry

 

[ViRGE]

I am still playing with Acronis. I don't want to backup the entire disk because I want to partition the bulk of it to D: for data storage so I don't have to image 750G of data to get 100G worth of OS backed up.

Perry

Acronis will let you select which partitions you want to backup, including hidden partitions. At least with 2013 I have no problem making a working image this way.

 

[Perryg114]

The backup part is easy. It is the recovery part that is tricky.

Perry