Windows 10 partitions?

[Kenmitch]

Did the in place upgrade from Win 8.1 Pro x64 to Win 10 Pro x64 the other day. Don't really feel comfortable with upgrading my OS for the long haul. Just did it to see if I like 10 or not.

I wound up just doing the reset this PC in recovery and chose to save nothing.

Windows is activated. Shows up under my Microsoft account now.

Strange thing is my SSD now has 5 partitions as shown in Disk Management.

300 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)
99 MB Healthy (EFI System Partition)
231.49 GB C: Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)
450MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)
450MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)

Is the above the norm for Windows 10?

I made a bootable USB drive with Win 10 Pro x64 on it. I'm thinking about just nuking the SSD's partitions and starting over.

Windows should activate without any issues?

 

[Anteaus]

Did the in place upgrade from Win 8.1 Pro x64 to Win 10 Pro x64 the other day. Don't really feel comfortable with upgrading my OS for the long haul. Just did it to see if I like 10 or not.

I wound up just doing the reset this PC in recovery and chose to save nothing.

Windows is activated. Shows up under my Microsoft account now.

Strange thing is my SSD now has 5 partitions as shown in Disk Management.

300 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)
99 MB Healthy (EFI System Partition)
231.49 GB C: Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)
450MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)
450MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)

Is the above the norm for Windows 10?

I made a bootable USB drive with Win 10 Pro x64 on it. I'm thinking about just nuking the SSD's partitions and starting over.

Windows should activate without any issues?

It does that for the upgrade because it needs to resize partitions to make things fit. If you do a clean install with format you will end up with two partitions common to 8.1. As long as your upgrade was successful, it should activate no problem. Whenever the install asks for a key, just skip that step. I think it asks at two different points in the install. Just ignore them and as long as your internet is active at the end it should activate.

I've gone through the upgrade, nuke, clean install process with three different machines now and they all activated with no problem using the process I described above. In one case I swapped the drive out between the upgrade and clean install and it still worked fine.

 

[Kenmitch]

It does that for the upgrade because it needs to resize partitions to make things fit. If you do a clean install with format you will end up with two partitions common to 8.1. As long as your upgrade was successful, it should activate no problem. Whenever the install asks for a key, just skip that step. I think it asks at two different points in the install. Just ignore them and as long as your internet is active at the end it should activate.

I've gone through the upgrade, nuke, clean install process with three different machines now and they all activated with no problem using the process I described above. In one case I swapped the drive out between the upgrade and clean install and it still worked fine.

Just got done nuking it. Deleted all the partitions during setup. Wound up with 3 partitions in the end. 450 MB Recovery, 100 MB EFI, the rest for windows. Guess I got back 750 MB's or so.

Win 10 didn't load drivers for my Killer NIC. Once installed it activated without even signing into my microsoft account. Downloading other drivers now.

Thanks for the reply

 

[WilliamM2]

I only had one partition with 8.1 (no system reserved partition). After upgrading still had only one partition, and after a clean install, still only one partition. I didn't do the EFI install though.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Also when you clean install 10 make sure that your target OS drive is the only drive attached to the system besides the installation drive. This forces windows to install the entire OS to that drive. I failed to do that when I clean installed 10 and I might have an issue with my efi system files not being on the ssd. I introduced a new hd to my system with 8.1 and since I was running in UEFI mode windows disk management partitioned the drive with an efi partition along with the ntfs partition. By not removing all drives except the target drive I believe that my installer used that efi partition because my ssd doesn't have anything except for the main boot partition on it. When I installed 8.1 in uefi mode I had 3 partitions on my ssd; efi, recovery and ntfs and I only had the dvd and the intel ssd attached to the sata ports. I am running 10 in uefi mode secure boot off that single partition.

 

[Anteaus]

Just got done nuking it. Deleted all the partitions during setup. Wound up with 3 partitions in the end. 450 MB Recovery, 100 MB EFI, the rest for windows. Guess I got back 750 MB's or so.

Win 10 didn't load drivers for my Killer NIC. Once installed it activated without even signing into my microsoft account. Downloading other drivers now.

Thanks for the reply

To date I still haven't created a Microsoft Account and activation worked no problem so I didn't think to mention it. Not creating a MS account is a sort of silent protest on my part.

 

[MadScientist]

Just got done nuking it. Deleted all the partitions during setup. Wound up with 3 partitions in the end. 450 MB Recovery, 100 MB EFI, the rest for windows. Guess I got back 750 MB's or so.

Win 10 didn't load drivers for my Killer NIC. Once installed it activated without even signing into my microsoft account. Downloading other drivers now.

Thanks for the reply

I did a manual upgrade of Windows 7 Ultimate from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

After installing, doing a Disk Cleanup of C drive, and manually deleting the $Windows.~WS file I ended up with the same 3 partitions as you on my SSD, a System Reserved 100 MB NTFS, a 450 MB Recovery, and the C drive.
http://betanews.com/2015/08/04/clean-up-after-a-windows-10-upgrade-and-regain-loads-of-disk-space/
I tried merging the partitions with C using Acronis Disk Director 12 but got errors when it rebooted, so I guess I'm stuck with them.

So if you get the same partitions with a clean install what's the advantage of it over an upgrade install and Disk Cleanup? I chose to save everything during the upgrade and everything is still intact. Only thing I did was upgrade my nvidia graphic drivers to the Windows 10 version.

 

[Puffnstuff]

With uefi you are supposed to have those three partitions so leave them alone!

 

[MadScientist]

With uefi you are supposed to have those three partitions so leave them alone!

Thanks for the advice.

 

[yinan]

I am running in UEFI and I only have 2 partitions.

 

[Kenmitch]

I am running in UEFI and I only have 2 partitions.

Did you boot install media in UEFI mode?

Besides windows partition what other one?

I'm fine with 3.

 

[MongGrel]

Just got done nuking it. Deleted all the partitions during setup. Wound up with 3 partitions in the end. 450 MB Recovery, 100 MB EFI, the rest for windows. Guess I got back 750 MB's or so.

Win 10 didn't load drivers for my Killer NIC. Once installed it activated without even signing into my microsoft account. Downloading other drivers now.

Thanks for the reply

Just find it interesting you still use a Killer NIC, I didn't even know those were a thing these days.

The wife still used to use my old one for browsing and streaming video on hers, I think the one I have is in a box someplace.

Not intending to sound demeaning, I still use a really old sound card myself, but didn't know they where really viable for any real boost these days.

 

[MongGrel]

I ought to put that in the main just to try it out again for grins and giggles, but I think I'd have to buy another adapter slot and probably not worth it.

I think it is still in her computer and shes not using it after going wireless in there.

Would be fun to play with maybe here, but only PCI-E slots on the main.

Sorry, was just thinking out loud to myself a bit.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I only had one partition with 8.1 (no system reserved partition). After upgrading still had only one partition, and after a clean install, still only one partition. I didn't do the EFI install though.

Yeah I only have one partition as well. Likely because of the way I installed 7 way back on my SSD. I didn't have a large drive or require GPT formatting. For me there's no advantage to a Windows UEFI install.

Just find it interesting you still use a Killer NIC, I didn't even know those were a thing these days.

The wife still used to use my old one for browsing and streaming video on hers, I think the one I have is in a box someplace.

Not intending to sound demeaning, I still use a really old sound card myself, but didn't know they where really viable for any real boost these days.

A lot of motherboards come with Killer NICs on board. Gibgabyte uses it instead of Intel. Some Asrock boards have both a Killer NIC and Intel NIC.

 

[Puffnstuff]

If you're messing with the created partitions you will regret it soon enough when it cannot find the bootloader. If you only have two partitions showing then check your other drives for an efi partition and when you locate one on another drive you will know why you don't install an os with anything but the boot drive attached.

 

[mxnerd]

My drive gets 6 partitions after upgrade. I can't assign drive letters to new created recovery partitions. Looked scary. Better not mess with them.

Guess will do a clean install.

 

[Kenmitch]

My drive gets 6 partitions after upgrade. I can't assign drive letters to new created recovery partitions. Looked scary. Better not mess with them.

Guess will do a clean install.

Probably best not monkeying around with your partitions.

Prebuilt rig?...Dell,HP,etc.

Clean install won't help as far as partitions go.

HDD or SSD? Looks to be odd ball size based on sum of all partitions.

 

[Underclocked]

Might be interesting for mxnerd to see if that OEM Recovery partition can even be accessed. I'm doubtful.

 

[mxnerd]

Probably best not monkeying around with your partitions.

Prebuilt rig?...Dell,HP,etc.

Clean install won't help as far as partitions go.

HDD or SSD? Looks to be odd ball size based on sum of all partitions.

It's HP laptop.

Why clean install won't help?

And it's HDD.

 

[mxnerd]

Might be interesting for mxnerd to see if that OEM Recovery partition can even be accessed. I'm doubtful.

Yep. It's assigned a D drive and there is a recovery folder. But I can't access it.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I just wiped out a hp restore partition. When you clean install delete all existing partitions and create a new one. This will create 3 partitions if doing a uefi install which is normal and don't forget to disconnect all other drives except for the target drive or it will scatter system files across them.

 

[Kenmitch]

It's HP laptop.

Why clean install won't help?

And it's HDD.

Best option would be to yank out the HDD and get a decent size SSD or I guess another HDD if you need lots of storage.

A clean install of Windows 10 won't eliminate your unwanted partitions by default.

You can make a bootable USB drive with the correct version of Windows 10 that you upgraded to. Would be best to make sure it's activated before doing anything drastic.

If you use a bootable media to install Windows 10 you can select the Custom install option and delete all the partitions. Windows will only create what it needs. This option will kill HP's restore feature which you may or may not need/want in the future....The reason for the best option statement.

 

[mxnerd]

Yes, I should have upgrade to SSD. Will do it later when Thanksgiving arrives.

 

[Kenmitch]

Yes, I should have upgrade to SSD. Will do it later when Thanksgiving arrives.

Don't worry about the extra partitions and wasted space by the HP restore partition for now then.

Just take Win 10 on a long test drive and make sure you like the look and feel of it.

As far as the SSD goes....Get one even if you decide to revert back to the original OS.

 

[Underclocked]

Make sure you have your original windows key recorded somewhere before wiping out that restore partition. You might need it later.