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  • Partitions on Packard-Bell

    From scbs29@21:1/5 to All on Wed Mar 9 11:34:12 2016
    Hello
    I have a PB iXtreme X6620 UK which when I had it had Windows 7 Home
    64-bit installed. The C: drive consisted of 3 partitions, PQSERVICE,
    SYSTEM RESERVED and the rest of the drive with Win7.
    I installed Windows 7 Professional, but left the partitions as they
    were. The SYSTEM RESERVED partition is marked as active amd Boot. Am I
    correct in assuming that bootup starts with the SYSTEM RESERVED
    partition as the active one ?
    Since I will never revert to Win7 Home, I want to remove these first
    two partitions and extend the WIn7 Pro partition to cover them and
    make this partition active.
    If I do this, will this affect the system booting ? Will I have to
    reset MBR ? Will I have to modify the BIOS to boot from the new active partition?
    Any adviced gratefully received
    TIA

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  • From scbs29@21:1/5 to All on Wed Mar 9 16:09:05 2016
    On Wed, 9 Mar 2016 15:16:29 +0000, Henry Law <news@lawshouse.org>
    wrote:

    On 09/03/16 11:34, scbs29 wrote:
    If I do this, will this affect the system booting ? Will I have to
    reset MBR ? Will I have to modify the BIOS to boot from the new active
    partition?

    Yes it will affect it, probably in inscrutable ways; see my post a few >minutes ago ...

    You can try changing the partition layout and then restoring an image of >Windows; you could even (with great courage) try deleting the unwanted >partitions and expanding the Windows one into the free space; either way
    you will then need to fix the MBR to point at the partition that is to
    be booted (the only one left).

    My worry, based on the experience I'm having at this very minute, would
    be that somewhere along the way you'll find a mismatch of some kind, or
    that there will be some vital part of the boot sequence which was in the >reserved partition and is now gone ... and you won't be able to boot at
    all, or rescue it.

    Do you really need that space? Would it not be easier to get a new
    larger disk and simply replicate the existing partitions onto it, and
    get more space that way?

    Windows booting is not well understood by many people and it's not well >documented; the risks of breaking something are not to be underestimated.

    Thanks for the reply. Makes me think I will stick with the status quo.

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  • From Henry Law@21:1/5 to All on Wed Mar 9 15:16:29 2016
    On 09/03/16 11:34, scbs29 wrote:
    If I do this, will this affect the system booting ? Will I have to
    reset MBR ? Will I have to modify the BIOS to boot from the new active partition?

    Yes it will affect it, probably in inscrutable ways; see my post a few
    minutes ago ...

    You can try changing the partition layout and then restoring an image of Windows; you could even (with great courage) try deleting the unwanted partitions and expanding the Windows one into the free space; either way
    you will then need to fix the MBR to point at the partition that is to
    be booted (the only one left).

    My worry, based on the experience I'm having at this very minute, would
    be that somewhere along the way you'll find a mismatch of some kind, or
    that there will be some vital part of the boot sequence which was in the reserved partition and is now gone ... and you won't be able to boot at
    all, or rescue it.

    Do you really need that space? Would it not be easier to get a new
    larger disk and simply replicate the existing partitions onto it, and
    get more space that way?

    Windows booting is not well understood by many people and it's not well documented; the risks of breaking something are not to be underestimated.

    --

    Henry Law Manchester, England

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