Removing Recovery Partitions from Dell Laptop

[Dave Cohen]

I copied boot and bootmgr from the Dell Recovery Partition to Windows 7
and set Windows 7 partition active. Machine booted ok, but when I deleted
the Recovery Partition and Dell Utility machine would not boot. Laptop is
Dell Studio 1555. I know people do this, what am I missing.

 

[Ed Cryer]

I copied boot and bootmgr from the Dell Recovery Partition to Windows 7
and set Windows 7 partition active. Machine booted ok, but when I deleted
the Recovery Partition and Dell Utility machine would not boot. Laptop is
Dell Studio 1555. I know people do this, what am I missing.

Which partition is marked as System?

Ed

 

[SC Tom]

I copied boot and bootmgr from the Dell Recovery Partition to Windows 7
and set Windows 7 partition active. Machine booted ok, but when I deleted
the Recovery Partition and Dell Utility machine would not boot. Laptop is
Dell Studio 1555. I know people do this, what am I missing.

The way I did it on my HP was to make an image of the C:\ drive with ATI
Home, format the whole hard drive, make the whole drive one partition, then
restore the image. Rebooted, and I was right where I was before the image,
except I had one larger partition instead of two.

 

[Ed Cryer]

The way I did it on my HP was to make an image of the C:\ drive with ATI
Home, format the whole hard drive, make the whole drive one partition,
then restore the image. Rebooted, and I was right where I was before the
image, except I had one larger partition instead of two.

And if that hadn't worked, then you could have booted from a Repair disk
and let it do its stuff.
Which would probably do the job for the OP in the situation he's got into.

Ed

 

[SC Tom]

And if that hadn't worked, then you could have booted from a Repair disk
and let it do its stuff.
Which would probably do the job for the OP in the situation he's got into.

+1

 

[Stan Brown]

I copied boot and bootmgr from the Dell Recovery Partition to Windows 7
and set Windows 7 partition active. Machine booted ok, but when I deleted
the Recovery Partition and Dell Utility machine would not boot. Laptop is
Dell Studio 1555. I know people do this, what am I missing.

You're missing a boot partition. I had this same problem when I
restored from backup to a replacement hard drive.

If you have a Windows 7 CD (DVD?), or can borrow one, boot from it on
your computer and select the option to repair Windows. Your existing
activation will stay in effect -- at least mine did.

 

[...winston]

In Win7 unless other optional methods are used to install Windows the boot
and bootmgr are normally stored on the System partition whereas the separate
boot partition contains the Windows operating system files.

In the case of the op's Dell system deleting the Recovery partition etc.
would appear to have wiped the System partition.

Using a Win7 DVD to repair, as noted, should resolve the op's Dell problem.
Preferably the same version of Win7 DVD as that installed should be used.
- i.e. if Win7 SP1 is installed, use a Win7 SP1 DVD


--
....winston
msft mvp mail


"Stan Brown" wrote in message

I copied boot and bootmgr from the Dell Recovery Partition to Windows 7
and set Windows 7 partition active. Machine booted ok, but when I deleted
the Recovery Partition and Dell Utility machine would not boot. Laptop is
Dell Studio 1555. I know people do this, what am I missing.

You're missing a boot partition. I had this same problem when I
restored from backup to a replacement hard drive.

If you have a Windows 7 CD (DVD?), or can borrow one, boot from it on
your computer and select the option to repair Windows. Your existing
activation will stay in effect -- at least mine did.

 

[Ed Cryer]

I did have to recover the system when it wouldn't boot, but the windows
restore cd recovers both the windows system and the two Dell partitions.
When you backup, the Recovery and Windows partitions are marked for backup
and greyed out, so you have to save both. To answer an earlier question, I
changed active partition from the Recovery to Windows.
A more serious problem is although Windows 7 and my Data partitions load
fine, I cannot install a side by side linux. Linux file system shows
everything, but gparted only shows an empty drive and claims the partition
table is invalid. My DellUtility is listed as DEh, I can't remember if
that is what it was originally, I have a feeling it was 0, but I'm not
sure.

I'm not quite sure just where you're at with this now. We could easily
be talking at cross purposes.

Recovery and Repair are different things, and that's where the confusion is.
From your original post position (ie after deleting the Recovery
Partition) you could have made the system bootable with either a Repair
Disk (created from the Backup and Restore page of Win7) or the repair
option of a Win7 set-up disk.

You seem, however, to have got it to boot ok. But you mention a problem
with Linux.

Firstly; Work merely with Win7, run checkdisk on all the partitions, run
some of your regular programs and see if everything is ok.

Secondly; Tackle this Linux problem. And if you want help there you'll
have to give us more details. Is it a clean install or a restore? Just
what do you mean by "side by side linux"?

Ed

 

[Ken Blake]

You're missing a boot partition. I had this same problem when I
restored from backup to a replacement hard drive.

I think you mean he's missing the *System* partition. The definitions
of "Boot Partition" and "System Partition" are the opposite of what
most of us might expect them to be.

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314470/EN-US/

 

[Stan Brown]

I think you mean he's missing the *System* partition. The definitions
of "Boot Partition" and "System Partition" are the opposite of what
most of us might expect them to be.

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314470/EN-US/

I expect you're right; thanks for the correction. I do stand by my
advice to use a Windows install disk to do a repair.

 

[Ken Blake]

I expect you're right; thanks for the correction.

You're welcome.

I do stand by my
advice to use a Windows install disk to do a repair.

Not a problem.