Recovering Win7 partn. after deleting its 100 MiB boot partn

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sigi
Posts: 243
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 1:59 am

Re: Recovering Win7 partn. after deleting its 100 MiB boot p

Post by sigi »

TeraByte Support wrote in http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ucf/vi ... 326#p12342:
>
> This is a user supported help group, not official support
>

Thank you for the info. That was new to me. There are certainly very valuable contributions by members. But there are also problems and questions put forward that would need answers by Terabyte Support. I would like to invite you to provide further assistance in this forum and to thank you for your assistance so far and hopefully in the future.


>
> and your questions and issues are outside use of the product itself.
>

That worries me and makes me uncertain because I had thought there are implications in the problem put forward that are related to Terabyte products. But I cannot possibly argue with you on that and have to rely on your goodwill.


>
> You're probably looking for something like
> http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=327
>
Thank you very much. This appears to be exactly what I was looking for. Perhaps this KB 327 may also be the solution to my related thread http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ucf/vi ... f=2&t=2257 (wrt the lost Win7 partition on HD-0, which had been overlapped by the 100 MiB partition created when trying to upgrade Win7_Koy to Win10).
I will report back on the outcome in both threads. But I will first create backups before I proceed with this KB instruction.
sigi
Posts: 243
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 1:59 am

Re: Recovering Win7 partn. after deleting its 100 MiB boot p

Post by sigi »

QUOTATION 1

> sigi wrote in http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ucf/vi ... 326#p12317:

> TeraByte Support wrote:
> >
> > QUESTION 2
> >
> > How can I find and position the correct BCD that would boot the partition?
> > I would prefer this course of action to restoring the full HD-0 backup.
> >
> > >> See http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=492
>
>
> http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=492 reads
> under "Accessing BCD Edit" para 4:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Click the BCD Edit button. The BCD Edit window appears.
Note: If you click the BCD Edit button and get a "No BCD Store"
error message, you have probably selected the wrong partition."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I do get a "No BCD Store" error message but I am sure it is not the wrong
> partition. Can't the "No BCD Store" error message in my case have
> something to do with the deletion (Clear Boot Sector) of the 100 MiB partition and if
> so, couldn't you give me some guidance on how to create a new BCD in a Terminal?
> Which Terminal in BIBM or TBWinRE would be appropriate for this task?



QUOTATION 2

sigi wrote in http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ucf/vi ... =10#p12400:
> TeraByte Support wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > You're probably looking for something like
> > http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=327
> >
> Thank you very much. This appears to be exactly what I was looking for. Perhaps this
> KB 327 may also be the solution to my related thread
> http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ucf/vi ... f=2&t=2257 (wrt the lost Win7
> partition on HD-0, which had been overlapped by the 100 MiB partition created when
> trying to upgrade Win7_Koy to Win10).
> I will report back on the outcome in both threads. But I will first create backups
> before I proceed with this KB instruction.



As mentioned in the QUOTATION 1 above, KB 492 did not work ("No BCD Store" error message).

In the meantime I have tried to follow the instructions of KB 327 (QUOTATION 2). After restart the Windows Boot Manager showed up and informed me that "The Windows Boot Configuration Data file does not contain a valid OS entry."

Several runs of WinRE (Startup Repair) with Win7_Koy as active partition did not find any OS and I do not know how to enter an OS in BIBM Boot Edit if the OS dropdown list does not show any.

So I resorted to EasyBCD and succeeded in installing a BCD for my Win7_Koy from within the booted Win7_2014 that made Win7_Koy bootable again. I did not have to study a lot of guidance material. It could be handled rather intuitively. I guess it could have been done with BIBM BCD Edit as well, perhaps in conjunction with some Terabyte command line utility, but I would have needed a lot of guidance. It might be a good idea for Terabyte to spend some more effort to provide similar functionality and easy handling as is the case with BCD Edit.

So Win7_Koy ist bootable again. It has no special boot partition as the one I had deleted. There is now a Boot folder located in the Win7_Koy root directory.

There is also an EFI Folder containing a Boot folder of its own in the Win7_Koy root directory. That is certainly a remnant of my Win7-Win10 upgrade attempt. which had been responsible for the creation of the former (now deleted) overlapping 100 MB boot partition. Another remnant of that upgrade attempt is a "Windows10Upgrade" folder in the Win7_Koy root directory. It contains the upgrade assistant, which I will soon start in a new attempt to upgrade.

I wonder whether it will run at all because the time for upgrading has expired. I think it will because I had downloaded all the necessary files in time. The other interesting questions are whether it will succeed this time and whether it will try again to create a boot partition of its own although the source Win7 (Win7_Koy) has a functioning boot folder now.

I will report to the forum on the outcome of the new upgrade attempt and the subsequent boot behaviour of the (hopefully) upgraded partition.
sigi
Posts: 243
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 1:59 am

Re: Recovering Win7 partn. after deleting its 100 MiB boot p

Post by sigi »

sigi wrote:
>
>
> The other interesting questions are whether it will succeed this time and whether it will try
> again to create a boot partition of its own although the source Win7 (Win7_Koy) has a
> functioning boot folder now.
>
>

I have not yet dealt with another Upgrade attempt at Win10. So, the second part of the above questions wrt the automatic creation of a boot partition is not relevant yet. But I can report that the partition again ill-behaved when (successfully) making it bootable again: This time it automatically created a "DELL" partition that overlapped and thereby destroyed one of my "resident" partitions (again on the other hard drive HD-0). Details can be read on my parallel thread viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2257
mashedmitten
Posts: 151
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2016 2:16 am

Re: Recovering Win7 partn. after deleting its 100 MiB boot p

Post by mashedmitten »

In order to get Windows to stop creating that 100MB partition it uses to un-compress installation files you must have the partition created before you install Windows. Also, you can't use recovery media from the manufacturer as that overwrites the whole disk, including the recovery/ install partitions.
sigi
Posts: 243
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 1:59 am

Re: Recovering Win7 partn. after deleting its 100 MiB boot p

Post by sigi »

mashedmitten wrote:
> In order to get Windows to stop creating that 100MB partition it uses to
> un-compress installation files you must have the partition created before
> you install Windows.

I did not install Win10. I upgraded from Win7, its partition having had sufficient free space (at least I thought so) to incorporate the upgrade product including a boot directory. Had I known then that I should create a dedicated boot partition before upgrading I would have done it. But how can I tell the upgrade tool to un-compress its boot files in there?

> Also, you can't use recovery media from the manufacturer as that overwrites the whole disk,
> including the recovery/install partitions.

The recovery media from the manufacturer (which was Win7) did not overwrite the whole disk. In fact, it did not overwrite anything on HD-1, where I installed it but went exactly into the partition I had created for it. It was only the later upgrade that created exactly one additional partition on the other hard drive (HD-0).
mashedmitten
Posts: 151
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2016 2:16 am

Re: Recovering Win7 partn. after deleting its 100 MiB boot p

Post by mashedmitten »

First question is why are you trying to apply an upgrade to W7 and not just grab the W10 ISO and install from scratch? If needed you could migrate anything crucial from 7 to 10.

I have to read through the whole thread before suggesting anything further, but from what I learned after 3 days of getting to grips with this program I learned this. Wipe the disks with BIBM to start with a clean slate. I didn't at first and learned the hard way. Second, create 8MB partitions on all physical boot HDDs as room for BIBM. If you select unlimited primaries, you have to change the disks to EMBR. Install BIBM on the first HDD and boot to it. Create any desired partitions in Partition Work and set them up in Boot Edit. Boot to the first and install OS1. When done, re-activate BIBM if Windows took over boot duty on install and repeat.

I'll read through the whole thread to see if anything pops out.
sigi
Posts: 243
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 1:59 am

Re: Recovering Win7 partn. after deleting its 100 MiB boot p

Post by sigi »

I am fully aware of a great many experts’ preference for new OS installations and Image restores as opposed to Repair work on existing OS’s.

I, for my part, would not consider myself a complete greenhorn as concerns installation of new OS’s but I tend to restrict this to new computers (cf. my viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1928). But since I invest much configuration work in my OS’s I tend to avoid replacing them by new installations. Moreover, I learn a lot by repairing them drawing on experience available in this and other forum(s).

@mashedmitten
Since you have read this thread you will have noticed that it deals with repairing my Win7_Koy partition. I succeeded already in restoring its bootability. As I pointed out towards the end of posting viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2326&start=10#p12777
what remains to be done is to try to upgrade it to Win10 without thereby automatically creating harmful additional partitions. And this is exactly what I will do once all necessary backups have been made. I will report on the outcome.

As concerns your specific guidance as to how to set up OS partitions I would like to draw your attention to Tom Pfeifer’s very useful “generalized disk layout for n operating systems”, which I cannot find any more in this forum or even in the internet but which to my mind deserves the renewed attention of forum members to whom it may benefit greatly.


Tom Pfeifer wrote:

Quote

The generalized disk layout I use for n operating systems on a
mixed Windows/Linux system looks something like this
(it's probably similar to what quite a few BING users do):

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Primary-1 Windows or Linux
Primary-2 Windows or Linux
Primary-3 Windows or Linux
Primary-n Windows or Linux

Free Space for additional primaries if/when needed

Extended
-- Volume-1 Linux swap
-- Volume-2 data/storage
-- Volume-n data/storage

Free Space to expand extended partition if/when needed

Primary for BING (can also be at beginning of drive)

---------------------------------------------------------------------


- Each OS is installed to a Primary, 1 thru n. Because the OS partition
is always put in the first MBR slot in Boot Edit, it is *always*
partition 1 to Linux and Windows, and (hd0,0) to Grub

- Each boot item is set up like this (example uses Primary-1):
MBR Slot 0 = Primary-1
MBR Slot 1 = Extended
MBR Slot 2 = None (optionally can contain another primary)
MBR Slot 3 = None (optionally can contain another primary)

- The Linux swap is the first volume in the extended partition. The
remaining volumes in the extended partition can contain items needed
to be available from any/all OSes. On mine, they are a mix of FAT32
and Linux volumes.

When installing an OS, the key thing is that you need to first set up
the boot item for it, and then boot it from the BING menu. The boot will
fail since there's no OS there yet. But doing that will load the MBR
with the partitions as set up in Boot Edit, so that the installer will
see them that same way. Right after the boot attempt (without booting
anything else), just reboot from the install CD and start the
installation.

Unquote
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: Recovering Win7 partn. after deleting its 100 MiB boot p

Post by DrTeeth »

On Wed, 21 Dec 2016 09:19:17 PST, just as I was about to take a herb,
sigi disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>But since I invest much configuration work in my OS's I tend to avoid replacing them by new installations. Moreover, I learn a lot by repairing them drawing on experience available in this and other forum(s).

I agree with you 120%. Most of my knowledge has been acquired by doing
things the hard way and fixing my own mistakes. Plus, computers must
not win, which is what they do if one does a re-install.
--
Cheers,

DrT

"If you want to find out what is wrong
with democracy, spend five minutes with
the average voter." - Winston Churchill
sigi
Posts: 243
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 1:59 am

Re: Recovering Win7 partn. after deleting its 100 MiB boot p

Post by sigi »

A am not in the habit of gathering views by posting redundant simple statements but in this special case I feel urged to thank my brother in spirit DrT thereby giving your 120 % even more weight.
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