scbs29 wrote:
Hello all
Last September I had to replace my pc. I bought one that had Windows
10 Home installed.
I had them install an SSD boot disk and Windows 7 Pro 64-bit to
replace the Windows 10.
The SSD contains 2 partitions, 100Mb labelled System Reserved (NTFS)
(Used 24%) and the C: drive, 117Gb (NTFS) (Used 65%).
The original C: drive is now D: containing 4 partitions, 400Mb
Recovery (NTFS) (Used 74%), 100Mb (FAT32) (Used 29%), (Other) 16MB and
D: 1862.4 GB (NTFS) (Used 7%), this holds most of my programs.
The Recovery partition I have now discovered seems to hold information
for Windows 10.
Yesterday afternoon (Sept 16th) my pc froze and the only way I could
do anything was to press the 'hot restart' button.
The pc started, but I was greeted with the information that there was
a problem and the system had to be repaired. I then received a Windows
10 splash screen and was told that my pc was being diagnosed, followed
by a screen stating that the system could not be repaired. There was
an option for Advanced Options, which I selected.
On the Advanced Options screen I have a few options, but the only one
through which I can reboot is Continue and Exit to Windows 10. I
select this and after a few seconds my mobo splash screen
appears. I then select F12 for boot options, followed by Esc and my pc
then boots into Windows 7.
I have to follow the above rigmarole every time I want to boot.
Can anyone advise me what, if anything, I can do about this state of
affairs?
I have found the Windows event log entries for about the time of the
freeze and they are zipped into a file on Dropbox, link
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r6cm2b4kdl...rrors.zip?dl=0
Would it be best to replace the Recovery partition with one for
Windows 7? Is this even possible ? Should I ask the pc supplier to do
this? (Local specialist pc builder/suppliers)
Can I stop it trying to repair?
Any advice gratefully received.
The computer may have reset the BIOS defaults when you
had your original problem. It could be an Asus or an Asrock
where you managed to trigger some sort of Overclocking-Detection.
The boot order (which drive to consider first), can be used
to "steer" the computer away from the errant drive. If you set
the Windows 7 drive "first" in the BIOS boot order, then
the Windows 10 drive need not be touched. On an Asus motherboard,
you use the Del key at start, to alter the settings in the BIOS,
including in the Boot menu, a sorted list of disk drives to be
considered, and in some particular order.
I've tried to draw a picture of your disk management, using your description.
Windows 10 HDD
+-----+-----------------+--------------------+-------+-------------+
| MBR | Recovery 400MB | 100MB FAT32 (ESP?) | 16MB | D: 1862.4GB |
+-----+-----------------+--------------------+-------+-------------+
Windows 7 SSD
+-----+------------------------+----------+
| MBR | System Reserved 100MB | 117GB C: |
+-----+------------------------+----------+
That does not explain why the Windows 10 volume is not working right.
The Windows 10, being set up by a mom and pop, could be an MSDOS
partitioned setup, or it could be a GPT (GUID Partition Table)
setup. The number and names of partitions differ between those
two choices.
Your mom and pop sounds like a UEFI/GPT as shown here.
I made up a sample install and took a couple pictures.
Notice that Disk Management simplifies the view a bit,
but the open-source "disktype" gives a complete dump.
"Partition 5" in GPT parlance, is the "unallocated space"
at the end of the drive. Every little "gap" on the disk
is called a partition, so when they're really small, you
might suspect it is a gap rather than the real thing.
GPT require "more interpretation" by the user, to make
sense of it. MSDOS partitioning doesn't tell lies like that.
https://i.postimg.cc/3rDR0wFH/WIN10-UEFI-GPT-setup.gif
https://i.postimg.cc/s2NjvFBX/first-...n-contents.gif
The first step in any process, is verifying what we've
got as materials...
*******
You can also work on individual drives, by powering off, then
unplugging the drive you *don't* want to boot. Then, only
the drive needing repair is in the machine, and there is
no "selection ambiguity" about what is getting repaired.
That's for people who are afraid they will "lunch"
the entire machine and have nothing when they're finished.
This is especially important for people who don't want
certain partitions scanned and included in boot menus.
(On occasion I've had a slug of drives in a machine,
did a boot repair and ended up with a royal mess in
the menu...)
You can use Macrium ReflectFree and its Emergency Boot CD, to
"fix boot problems" from the accompanying menu item in the CD
menu. This is not included in the "installed in Windows" version
of the program, because the Emergency CD would be running the
show, at the instant the repairs were being done. This does
tiny structural things, like rewrite the BCD menu file, reload
MBR boot sector, reload PBR boot materials, dunno about GPT
ESP boot file(s). It's slightly better than the Windows
repair, and I recommend using ReflectFree CD for this (with
*only* the broken drive present), preferentially before
using any Windows repair buttons. Sometimes a Macrium repair
is enough, sometimes Macrium + Windows brings it back up.
Like tag-team wrestling.
But other than that, we may have to work at this a bit
at a time, to bring it back to ship-shape. For example, if
you boot the Win10 DVD the shop gave you, there is a
non-install option that supports repair/troubleshooting,
and you *could* do CHKDSK /f C: while in the Command
Prompt window such an environment can provide.
There are also DISM and SFC /scannow commands you can
use, but the syntax is different to do "offline" repairs
than for the normal "from the C: drive (online) repairs".
My concern about needing something like that, would be
hypothesizing "how did we get in this mess", to need
such an approach. If the partition is damaged (unlikely),
it could lose enough materials to malfunction. An AV
that receives a bad update, can quarantine just one
stinking file, and *ruin* a Windows partition, and
it would take a lot of thinking, DISM and SFC commands,
to replace the file and bring it back up.
I've had one occasion where it looked like Windows Defender
messed up a C: , and I had to try the whole slew of things
to bring it back. Usually it's a third-party AV which
aggressively mis-treats a system32 file.
Paul