Have this in to support too, but posting here in case as I need help quickly. Essentially: Dell XPS8300 Desktop running Win 8.1 had Dell Service Partition, Dell Recovery Partition and C: (all primary partitions) and an extended partition with a couple of logical disks Using HDM14 I deleted the Dell Recovery Partition to free the space (of no use with its original Win 7) and chose to overwrite with 0's It rebooted to do the task which appeared to run OK but when it subsequently rebooted it evidently could not boot from the harddisk as it tried a network boot. Using HDM12 Pro Linux boot disk I looked at the partition list and there were now no active partitions, so I set the O/S partition to active and also hid the remaining Dell Service partition. Now when it boots I just get the message 'BOOTMGR is missing'[/INDENT] I also note that in HDM12 Pro the partition list is showing the hidden, inactive Dell Service partition as C: but has not assigned a letter to the O/S partition. Anyone any ideas about how this could have happened and what to do about it. I can just try to fix the partition boot record BUT as I only have my HDM12 Pro Linux disk and Paragon say only HDM14 is compatible with Win 8.1 I am nervous about doing that and in any case I need to know what happened to avoid it happening again. Thanks in anticipation. Graham
In some Dell computers, the "recovery" partition is also the boot partition. It contains the factory recovery image, but also the information required to boot (BOOTMGR, BCD, etc.). In general, this partition is called the "SRP" (System Reserved Partition) in Windows 7. So, you deleted the boot or active partition, and windows can´t boot.
Thanks for your very quick reply Robin, it would certainly explain my situation. Although I now understand that marking the O/S partition as active is not enough, given the situation I am in is there something else I can do to make it bootable? Alternatively, as I took a Paragon backup of the Recovery partition before I deleted it, if I restored that and made it active should it kick back in? Any other solutions? Graham
Marking the OS partition as active is not enough. You have to create the boot information in this partition, them mark it as active. This can possibly be done using the Boot Corrector module included in Paragon recovery media. Another solution would be to use the bcdboot command from a boot medium. But if you have an image of RECOVERY, of course the first thing to do is to restore this image and see what happens. After the restore, check that RECOVERY is set as "active".
Thanks again. I restored the partition, set active and set the OS partition as not active, but now on reboot I immediately get message Recovery <...> Error code 0xc0000034 which I gather means the boot configuration is corrupted, or at least not working. I'll try some more things. But in general, on such Dell systems, does it mean that making a partition backup of the OS partition in the hope that it can be used to recover if the disk is permanently damaged/lost will not work unless the Recovery partition is also backed up and restored? I'd be almost certain that most people are not doing that! Graham
Most Windows 7 installations don´t have the SRP partition, Windows boots from the OS C: partition. The SRP partition is only strictly needed to support BitLocker encryption. But, for some reason, in some Dell computers with Windows 7 versions that don´t even support BitLocker, this partition is used, and is called "RECOVERY", which is misleading. You can safely delete SRP. This topic has been discussed previously (but not recently) in this forum (try searching for "SRP"). In general, there are two procedures: To "copy" the boot info from SRP to OS, or to create new boot info in OS. After you do this and boot successfully from OS, you can delete SRP.
Also it seems significant that within HDM12 Pro Linux Boot environment only the O/S partition is not being assigned a drive letter? All other partitions on Disk 0 (including the Dell Service and Recovery partitions and 2 logical partitions) and Disk 1 (1 primary and 2 logical partitions) have been assigned drive letters. The O/S partition on Disk 0 is listed as Primary, NTFS, Active=No, Hidden=No, Size, Used, Free all look right. Why might it be singled out for not having a drive letter, does that say something? Graham
I don´t know why OS doesn´t have a letter assigned. But this letters are not very meaningful. To identify the partitions in boot media I use the label, size and file system. I have a Dell laptop with a RECOVERY (SRP) partition. In WinPE boot media, RECOVERY is shown as "C" (perhaps because it´s the active partition), and OS as "E". So, to backup the Windows partition, I have to choose "E" and not "C". Info about the SRP partition in Windows 7 Forums: http://www.sevenforums.com/gtsearch...008077:hfslqp-2rmq&cof=FORID:9&ie=UTF-8&q=SRP.
Just an update, after 24 hours I have my Win 8.1 booting again and now directly from the OS C: partition with no Recovery (System Reserved Partition) partition involvement, thanks to advice from Robin, and taking his lead, some Googling. For anyone else who faces this problem essentially what needs to happen: Put into the Windows partition some critical boot time files that are by default only in the Recovery partition. C:\Boot folder and C:\BOOTMGR file. Change the active partition from the Recovery Partition to the Windows partition. Build the BCD configuration in the Windows partition The difficult part is HOW to do that, especially if you have already deleted some files, I will cover this in another post but it's late and I need to do that another day! Graham
