OSD and Win 8

[YAUN]

Fire up tbosdtw64 to run copyp2v script on a running Win 8 64 bit system. Select Copy a physical drive...select running (or even another, non running) Win 8 64 bit system = error, "No boot files and no system reserved partition found."

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

Are you using the current version of TBOSDT (1.44)?

Also, make sure you're running it from an Administrator Command Prompt.

[YAUN]

Yes, ver. = 1.44.0.0 and yes, right mouse click Command and selected Run As Administrator.

[Eric]

What is your active partition?
Do you have a multi-boot system?
What boot first?
Is it an EFI system? Or a MBR?

[YAUN]

Um, Disk Manager shows no active partition only healthy, boot, pagefile, crashdump for the C: booted and used in copyp2v.
Disk Manger shows only healthy for other, non running, Win 8 (Small Win 8, see below) used in copyp2v.
Yes, Windows mulitboot with Win 8, Win 7, Small Win 8 in that order (Win 8 runs from SSD, Win 7 from disk, Small Win 8 from too small a SSD; hence, the redo to first Win 8. Small Win 8 useful for testing copyp2v with an offline Win 8 sys)
Disk Manager reports partition style as MBR in properties, volumes pick.

[Eric]

If I understand correctly your system, and if copyp2v says that there is no boot files for both Win8, then I suppose that the boot disk is the "disk" (containing Win7), and that the boot partition is Win7?
So you may need to copy the boot files (file \bootmgr and folder \Boot\) from the Win7 to the Win8's.

[Eric]

Maybe you can send the listing of partinfw.exe (or partinfo, or partinfg)?

[YAUN]

I may have misunderstood the active partition question thinking it only applied to the Win 8. Disk Manager does report Win 7 as active. Does this mean I should make a Win 8 active? I'm reluctant to just charge ahead being paranoid of damaging an operating situation! Thanks and sorry for not being more accurate 1st time around.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

No, don't change which partition is active -- that will cause booting problems.

What Eric is suggesting is to copy the booting files from the booting partition (Windows 7) to the Windows 8 partitions. Then the copyp2v script should see them and be able to update them. For example, if you wanted to copy the booting files to Small Win 8 you could boot into Windows 7 and do the following:

1. Open an Administrator Command Prompt.

2. Use drive letters appropriate for your system. This example will use C: for Windows 7 and H: for Small Win 8.

3. Unload the BCD registry hive by running the following command:
reg unload HKLM\BCD00000000

4. Copy the bootmgr file by running the following command:
robocopy C:\ H:\ bootmgr

5. Copy the Boot folder by running the following command:
robocopy C:\Boot H:\Boot /s

The instructions are a subset of those in KB 409 Part 1 (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=409). In this case, you're just copying the files. There's no need to update them since the script will do that.

Note: Windows 8 may already have the bootmgr file in the root folder of the partition (Small Win 8, above). You can skip Step 4 if it does.

[Eric]

What I'm calling the "active" partition, is the partition that boot
first when you switch-on your computer. It is the partition that
contains the boot menu and sequence... Not the partition containing the
system being running at a time.

What happens is that you may probably have installed the Win8 and
mini-Win8 systems after the Win7 one. Win7 was then the active partition
(and is still the one) at that moment. At the installation, Windows 8
had detected that and had just added a boot entry in the boot menu
within the Win7 partition. It didn't installed the boot files within its
proper partition. Also, it didn't create any "System Reserved Partition"
(SRP: a small partition dedicated to the boot sequence), since Win7 was
there.

As a consequence, there is no boot files within both Win8's, and no SRP.
copyp2v is detecting that and just prevent you that there is something
missing, and that there is no need to continue (otherwise your system in
the Virtual drive won't boot).

Copying the boot files/folders into the Win8 partitions might be the
easiest solution in your case.