View Full Version : Windows7 boot/logical drive
I am juggling partitions/drives at the moment and it appears that my system will not boot if I have a connected drive (not the OS or boot drive) with a logical partition. Why is that?
mixture
28th Sep 2014, 12:45
You might need to fiddle around in your BIOS with boot order and/or enabling/disabling boot devices depending on what your ultimate goal is.
Boot order is set correctly to DVD then C drive.
Aim was to see hoew to create 5 partitions on a 500GB data drive, which needs part 4 as logical and then machine wiill not boot.
Drive originally was the XP boot drive and subsequently a Win7 boot drive, but no longer as I boot from a SSD. Will it have 'retained' the boot config and thus need re-formatting to clear?
mixture
28th Sep 2014, 17:48
That possibly might be something to do with it. I guess if re-formating is not attractive, what you might look at doing is booting up the computer with the additional drive turned off, then turn it on and mess around with it to delete the boot sector you no longer need from the additional drive.
That is how I have been progressing - only problem is I cannot see any boot evidence on the partitions apart from C .
I think I'll just have to bite the bullet, copy away the files and re-format. Wanted to see if there was any known restriction on booting with a logical partition in place, but it appears not.
mixture
28th Sep 2014, 20:52
Does anything interesting show up under msconfig -> boot ?
Just shows the C Drive as boot. Thanks for the stuff so far. I'll knock it on the head tonight.
Very strange! The second drive will only allow boot-up if it has 4 or less primary partitions. Any attempt to change the second or later to logical prevents boot up.
Out of my depth here - how can I remove a boot sector if I cannot see it (assuming there is one...)?
Saab Dastard
29th Sep 2014, 17:58
BOAC,
Aim was to see hoew to create 5 partitions
A HDD partitioned using MBR can contain a maximum of 4 partitions, one of which may be an Extended partition, the rest must be Primary partitions. Within an Extended partition you may create Logical partitions.
Windows must have the boot files (io.sys, bootmgr, ntldr, etc.) on a primary partition, although the system files (Windows folder & subfolders) may be on any partition. It's possible that the system BIOS may also mandate a specific location for the boot files of the primary operating system.
It's not clear to me what the current partitioning scheme is (how many partitions, of what type), and where various boot files from various installations of Windows are located.
SD
I'm with that, Saab, thanks, but how do you explain my previous post puzzle?
EDIT: To amplify: I have 4 primary partitions on a 500GB sata. I have (laboriously!) copied all 4 to a spare couple of 160 SATAs, wiped the 500GB, reformated NTFS, and UNLESS I create only primary partitions, the system will not boot. Any sign of extended or logical and it fails.
I have now restored 4 primaries to the 500gb (without data) and she boots fine.
Saab Dastard
29th Sep 2014, 22:56
Are you creating the 3 Primary plus single Extended partition from within windows? How many Logical partitions are in the extended partition?
SD
Using Minitool Partition.
I have a 500GB SATA, partitioned D/E/F/G plus unallocated, all primaries. I change one of the primaries to logical, and no boot. Boot with drive unplugged and then hot plug it, restore partition to Primary, reboot - all normal again.
System is on C, a SDD drive. The 500 has been wiped and reformatted.
Things are not getting better! I thought "Try the Win7 DVD Repair option and see what it says"
Well, it said
"This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible.. blah blah blah"
Win7 64bit DVD, win7 64 bit Win7??????
EDIT: Stupid me - It appears that the boot drive has to be on SATA 0 for Recovery to work - I had the DVD drive on 0. That bit is fixed.
To revitalise the query since folk appear to have run out of ideas. Just tried again, changed partition G (purely data) from primary to 'logical' and no boot up. Restore to primary, all ok.
Limited google info and what I have found suggests UEFI may be involved, which is a huge black hole to me.
Edit: I have however found this, http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/fd6fa936-5f83-487b-864a-47b6030382fb/extended-partition-on-old-mbr-hdd-makes-windows-7-uefi-boot-fail?forum=w7itproinstall which suggests an unfixed bug in W7 and 8. Although the OP is a dual-booter (I am not) the symptoms are exactly the same.
Saab Dastard
1st Oct 2014, 17:33
BOAC,
That's a good find - pretty definitive, I would say. I wouldn't hold your breath for a fix, possibly not even in Win Hate.
SD
If there is a sense of relief it is that it is not my system itself that is duff! Good old M$. Not a peep from them about it. In view of the difficulty I have had uncovering the problem, I wonder how many folk know about this?
I am most reluctant to change the system drive to MBR which would probably sort the problem, Maybe if I have to re-install I will.
It would be interesting if anyone with a UEFi system, spare HD capacity and hot-plugging enabled could try to add a logical partition to a drive and see what happens. If it works.............
Following sorting out post #13 I tried today to make a Win7 USB boot drive. Firstly the M$ 'USB Download Tool' is bugged and does not install the ISO on the drive. Great! Finally cracked that and got a bootable USB. BUT same problem again as post #13 when I tried 'Repair' - "This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible.. blah blah blah"
Has anyone on here produced a working USB boot drive for Win7 that will allow repair? If so, what is the secret?
I did, but it was a while ago.
Could it be that all the updates MS has supplied for your Win 7 Installation have moved it too far from the original DVD for that to recognise what it is?
I have a vague recollection of a way to produce a new DVD based on your "now" installation, but haven't tried to do that.
I do have a Knoppix-on-a-stick which has in years past been a very useful tool to recover damaged hard drives. Again, not done that for a while - I have my own simple-but-effective weekly backups to external hard drives.
Mike-Bracknell
6th Oct 2014, 21:27
Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way (http://rufus.akeo.ie/)
I have seen that, Mike, but will it allow the stick to run repair or is it, as Keef says, a different issue? 'Producing' the stick was finally achieved, running 'repair' from it has not been.
Incidentally, I have tried 'BootableUSB' but that will not complete the installation on the stick.
Keef - I don't know. 'Repair' is still accessible from the original DVD now I have the correct SATA allocation.
Mac the Knife
7th Oct 2014, 21:38
Well, this looks like a bug/"regression" - that Win7 won't boot if it sees a drive with a logical partition.
I remember playing around with logical partitions years ago, using them for different datasets and to circumvent long absolute paths (along with ASSIGN and later SUBST) - ended up creating a whole mess that looked like a network!
Really can't see any advantage in using logical partitions in Windows (especially in a small 500GB HDD) and anyway, using GUID rather than MBR allows you 128 primary partitions if that's your bag.
If I have only one usable HDD (as on a laptop) I generally create only two partitions (both primary), SYSTEM and DATA - one holds the OS and apps and the other my (surprise!) personal data and that's it.
I used to multiboot with separate physical disks for each OS, but with todays big drives it's easier (and nearly as fast) to work additional OSes from a bare-metal hypervisor like Oracle VM or a hosted VM like VirtualBox.
So the problem is interesting, but IMHO not that important/relevant today.
Mac
:suspect:
So the problem is interesting, but IMHO not that important/relevant today. - agreed, more for interest I guess. It is easy to work around.
I've given up on getting repair to work off a boot stick!