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"partition is of an unrecognized type"

Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 4:38 pm
by plain
A looooonngg story...

I have BIBM installed on a hard drive on which there are 3 other partitions. The second partition is empty, the third has W 7, the fourth is empty.

I was running out of room on the third partition "C" drive so I bought a larger drive and used IFW suite to copy my old disk to new with the image scaled to target. This worked well.
But I also wanted to install Windows 7 on partition 4 of the new drive so that I can sysprep it and get ready to clear out the old Windows 7 install on partition 3. When I booted to my retail W 7 disk at the "press any key..." message, and got to the part where I am to choose a partition I was told Windows couldn't be installed on the 4th partition because of a GPT issue. So I went back to BIOS and there found a setting that supposedly supports both UEFI and Legacy, and only UEFI, and only Legacy so I chose legacy. Then went about booting again.
This time, I had to delete partition 4 (or so I thought) and repartition 4 and format. The Windows install proceeded.

I was very happy until I rebooted. At this point I couldn't get to BIBM as it wasn't an option....in other words the EMBR message never appeared, grrrr. So I re copied from the old hard drive to new again this morning and installed the DVD, rebooted and this time waited for a second "press any key..." message because I had researched and found the first message boots you into a GPT install environment and the second into MBR which is what I want.
So I get to the point where my 4 partitions show up in Win 7 DVD on drive zero and now the message is "Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. The partitions is of an unrecognized type." The thing is I had used BIBM to format this partition on the smaller hard drive and assumed that would be good enough when it was restored to the new bigger hard drive.

My questions are.. Did BIBM get it wrong, Did IFW get it wrong or is not capable of doing what I want? I don't know.

I've been pretty lucky with Win 7 and haven't had to reinstall these past 4 or 5 years. My understanding is Windows 7 will install to a drive that is already partitioned and formatted NTFS without the small boot partition so that is what I am trying to do.

I guess I can just get a small drive and make two NTFS partitions and install Win 7 there then copy it over to a partition on my bigger drive but I should think I can do the same thing with the one I will use permanently.

Can you provide any insight into what I am doing wrong or how to proceed to install Win 7 on my 4th partition without wiping out BIBM and having to start over there? When this happens of course, I am unable to boot to my old Win 7 partition to look for a solution so I am trying to avoid a lot of experimentation.

Any thoughts?

Re: "partition is of an unrecognized type"

Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 5:07 pm
by CyberSimian
plain wrote:
> I was very happy until I rebooted. At this point I couldn't get to BIBM as
> it wasn't an option....in other words the EMBR message never appeared,
> grrrr.

Windows overwrites the MBR during an install. At the point where you shut down Windows 7 and then attempted to reboot it, you should instead have plugged in your BIBM memory stick and booted from that. BIBM would then ask whether you wanted to re-activate BIBM, to which you would reply "Yes". You then unplug the BIBM memory stick and reboot again, and this time you get the usual BIBM boot menu.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

Re: "partition is of an unrecognized type"

Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 7:56 pm
by plain
Well I'll be!... I was under the impression if the disk was already partitioned and formatted Windows 7 would only write to it's assigned partition. Ha1 How little I know!

Thanks CyberSimian! I will report back!

plain

Re: "partition is of an unrecognized type"

Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 5:46 pm
by plain
So naturally I only have these issues when I'm working...

Went back in BBM and formatted the partition 7/7H:NTFS/exFAT/HPFS/+ then stuck the Win 7 DVD in and rebooted. Boot with DVD, get to the custom installation page and there are my 4 partitions and the result after choosing the one I am attempting to work with " .....Partition is of an unrecognized type". Went back to BBM and looked around, the partition I was trying to install to was hidden; So I unhid it and hid the booting W7 partition... "...Partition is of an unrecognized type". Went back in and was about to run out of ideas when in looking at the properties for each partition I noticed my active partition which I had hidden had this for properties: 23/17h:Hidden NTFS/exFAT/+. But I had read that it should be 7 something and the only choice for a 7 slash is 7/7H:NTFS/exFAT/HPFS/+. What do these hieroglyphics mean?, heck I don't know.

Now I was venturing into the experimentation part I had tried to avoid.

I then went to BBM and some knowledge base articles and became even more confused in some aspects but as far as the right way to install W7 by only allowing BBM to mess with my partitions I was definitely on board.

Then I changed the properties for the partition I am trying to install so that it is 23/..etc. . So I thought "Well I might as well make the partition 'Active' too, maybe that will help." So I did. With the 23/17h:Hidden NTFS/exFAT/+ as properties and the partition 'active' and all others hidden W7 was happy to install.

Installed to Audit Mode, restarted, BBM now has the partition as 7/7H:NTFS/exFAT/HPFS/+ ACCKKK! But W7 is installed and now I am happy.

Any information about the different codes for partitions is much appreciated. I haven't been able to find it so far. Thanks for the help CyberSimian. I'm not really sure I know any more than I did starting out but I don't have to do this too often so I guess I can man-up and experiment if I have to. Thank Goodness for IFW!

plain