Does Windows Care Which Drive It Boots From?

[Snacko]

When I first built my pc, I didn't pay attention to which disk was plugged into which slot. I didn't think it really mattered if it was disk 0, 1, 2, or 3.

Last weekend I had to restore my rig from a backup image. I had installed a new 1tb drive since that backup, so after I booted up I changed my C: and D: drives that 'were' one drive with two partitions, back into just one big C: partition. Basically I removed the D: partition and then resized the C: partition to use up all the now unused space using Acronis Disk Director. Then I reassigned the E: drive the letter D: and the new terrabyte drive from F: to E:. So, now I have C, D, and E.

Last night, I rebooted my computer, and noticed before I rebooted that Windows had an update to install on reboot. Ok, not big deal. But when it booted up it installed something and displayed some message about updating the registry entry 32,043 or something, but it looked like it was just updating one thing because that just took 5 seconds and then it asked me to Logon. I did, and it said Windows Loading or whatever it says and then black screen and nothing for about 4 minutes before I forced a reboot. Same thing happened. So, I went into Safe Mode and it seemed ok, so I rebooted normally and same problem, black screen.

So, I wanted to restore to before the 'patch' BG (Bill Gates) put on my computer to 'fix' it. But in Safe Mode System Restore does not work. It said I have to enable some service and to click the link for Help. I did click and the help had a link to click to open System in Control Panel. Again, I did click and nothing happened. I clicked again and again.. nothing... Anyhow, long story short.... I could not even open the Control panel and Safe Mode was locked up. So, I rebooted and tried again, and again. Finally, booted from the Win7 DVD and did a repair. It said some Startup information was wrong and the details showed something about booting was going to be fixed. So, I said ok...

I booted normally again and had the same black screen after login. So, I decided to just watch tv and wait... After about 7-8 minutes it loaded. While in Safe Mode I did notice that Disk Management said my disks C, D, and E were Disks 0, 1, and 2. But that is not how my system was setup. Now that I am booted normally, it is correct AFAIK, it is C, D, and E is Disk 2, 0, and 1. Like this:

And in System Protection (System Restore settings) it says I have two C: drives and one is missing!

I did a full C backup image last night to save my ass if I can. Acronis True Image 10 took about 5 minutes to load because it was 'processing' on start. I think it was trying to figure out my disk drive configuration. This morning I did a backup image verification to be sure it was a good backup. Then I loaded Acronis Disk Director and it also took about 5 minutes to load to figure out my disk config. Then I rebooted about 30 minutes ago and it took about 5 minutes after I logged in to get to the desktop.

Does Windows care how you setup your disks? I was thinking of plugging C: into the Disk 0 slot, and D: into 1 and E into 2, but don't want to screw anything up worse.

Edit:

Also, I just noticed that if I look at the properties of the C drive and click on the Previous versions tab it says I have 1 previous version of C: from yesterday at 10:39pm. That was about the time I did the repair from the Windows 7 DVD.

[B16Enk]

Whenever I install windows I always unplug every drive except the one I want as my C drive.

Windows doesn't particularly care which physical drive is which, the boot loader is found via your BIOS (it presents drive for boot ops and OS loads making that drive the system drive).

Where problems can arise is when you move the disks around, however 7 writes and uses a signature to determine it's boot drive, this detail is recorded in the Boot Configuration Data store..

It looks like you have two entries in there Andy, and one is incorrect.

You can do this the manual way, or the GUI way:

http://neosmart.net/downloads/software/EasyBCD/EasyBCD%201.7.2.exe <-- the GUI

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721886(WS.10).aspx <-- Not the easiest thing to follow, it can be done though

This was introduced with Vista and is an unnecessary complication IMHO, the old boot.ini did the job just fine!

[Snacko]

Thanks Rog, I do have a backup image if I screw things up, so I'll take a look at this.

When I noticed that previous version of my C drive a little while ago, I wondered if System Restore settings saw that also and it was the one it marked as missing. But they are probably two different things.

[Snacko]

Easy BCD says that I only have 1 entry. I was poking around and looking at System Restore (because it had been turned off somehow, maybe by Safe Mode?) and here you see it says I have that other C drive that is not found/missing...

Here are the details from EasyBCD. I have been trying to check my C drive to match it up with one of these ID numbers, but have not been able to. I've been using different tools (Acronis Disk Director Suite; Windows Disk Management; Drive Properties window; Device Mgr; System Information; ect..).

[B16Enk]

Your BCD doesn't look right to me..

My Windows Boot Manager device = partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1

Yours = partition=C:

I just checked in disk administrator... you have a partition missing!

Mine:

This is my BCD dump (note it is dual boot):

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1
path                    \bootmgr
description         	Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit             	{7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default             	{be31a13d-d003-11de-9d4f-8d0029c6918d}
resumeobject            {19af2595-ea69-11de-9c0a-806e6f6e6963}
displayorder            {be31a136-d003-11de-9d4f-8d0029c6918d}
                       {be31a13d-d003-11de-9d4f-8d0029c6918d}
toolsdisplayorder   	{b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout             	5

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {be31a136-d003-11de-9d4f-8d0029c6918d}
device                  partition=D:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description         	Windows Server 2008 R2
locale                  en-US
inherit             	{6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
recoverysequence        {be31a137-d003-11de-9d4f-8d0029c6918d}
recoveryenabled     	Yes
osdevice                partition=D:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {be31a135-d003-11de-9d4f-8d0029c6918d}
nx                      OptOut
hypervisorlaunchtype    Auto

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {be31a13d-d003-11de-9d4f-8d0029c6918d}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description         	Windows 7 Ultimate
locale                  en-US
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {19af2595-ea69-11de-9c0a-806e6f6e6963}

Oh, and yes my 7 is installed on disk 1 (I installed 2008 first) and it appears as C in 7 and..err D or E in 2008 when disk 0 is C

[Snacko]

As for the System Reserved partition, I found this:

7 will create a 100 mb System, Active partition during installation if there is not already an active partition present.

If there is an already an Active partition, it will use that as the System partition - presumably in case you already have an o/s installed.

I am not sure, but I thought I had Windows setup the partitions when I did the install.

Also, I do see:

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1

when I look at the System Information app.

[Jabo]

You definitely need that little 100MB partition m8. I wonder if yours went AWOL when you were swapping the drives about? I used to do the same as Rog, and only have the OS drive connected when reinstalling the OS, but since using Acronis, I've been leaving all the drives in situ (except my external 'last ditch' backup drive - just in case ) - seems to work OK. One thing I have noticed though is that the drive letters do swap about depending on which OS I'm booting to (XP, 7, ubuntu), so I've taken the precaution of individually naming all the partitions so I know which drive is which regardless of the drive letter.

Jabo

[Snacko]

That is weird then, because I don't have it... It is weird that this all happened just last night when I noticed a MS OS Patch as I was rebooting to get ready to fly. How would a patch do that? And I did resize my partitions last weekend and have had no problems. That patch put a weird message on the OS Loading screen about updating registry entry 37086 or something... It just flashed and then I got the login screen, and logged in and then it hung with a black screen..

I did have EasyBCD do it's Recreate and Reset on the Diagnostics Center page. It said it fixed some stuff. I rebooted and got a bad boot message error. So, I booted from the Win7 DVD and did a Repair. This time I took note of what the repair screen said. It was going to change my system to boot from device E:. E: is NOT my boot device. It is disk 1 on my system. C: is 3. So, I said NO, and Looked at some other repair options that I had not seen before. There were several tools for repair and I did one that said something about fixing Startup. It said it fixed something, and I rebooted. This time, it booted much faster, but not as good as normal, but almost.. It maybe took 30 seconds longer than normal. I am going to see how this keeps booting up. It might get faster as it figures out what is going on. Maybe I'll see what the Win7 DVD repair option says later if I still have problems...

Thanks for your help..

[B16Enk]

That 100Mb missing partition is created by either Win 7 or 2008 R2 during install, but only if you do not have any partitions on the disk already!

The 100MB system reserved partition is only available for Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Business and Windows 7 Enterprise editions. The 100 MB system partition is used primarily as BitLocker partition for BitLocker encryption. Additionally, it also holds the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) and boot files with boot manager for booting up the computer for troubleshooting when there is no Windows 7 installation DVD disc on hand.

Article detailing how to avoid it and/or remove it

When I had to swap out my drive, and restore a backup image, I had to modify the boot manager store to point to the new serial/hash for the replacement drive.

It looks to me Andy that when you did your restore your boot store was put onto a different drive to where it was originally, and if you had installed 7 to an unpartitioned drive your restore did not include the 100MB system drive.

Win 7 wanting to write it back to you E: drive may be correct, as this is the first drive your system BIOS presents as the boot drive.

The boot store will then tell the OS loader where the OS is loaded from.

What you may want to try is booting from Win 7 DVD and selecting the Command Prompt option.

Once that has loaded do a dir c: and compare the listing returned with what you know as your C drive, it may come back with the folder listing of your E: drive!

This excellent article is for Vista, but applies to Win 7 too and you could follow the 2nd to last or last process to wipe clean your BCD store and recreate afresh.

Another good BCDEDIT tutorial on the seven forums site (a good site)

[Snacko]

Ok, I just booted from the Windows DVD and this time it did not automatically display a boot info error message. All the other times as soon as I got into the Repair screen and it finished scanning my system it would display a message saying my boot information was wrong or something. Last time it said it was going to fix it to boot from drive E: as I said, and I clicked No to skip that. This time it didn't show that message, it just scanned my system and then displayed the two repair option radio buttons (Repair tools, or Restore from Image I think). So, I went into the Repair tools and used the Command Prompt. And you were correct Roger. I did a Dir on E: and it showed the files that are on my C: drive in Windows. When I boot from the DVD it must just assume drive 0 is C, 1 is D, and 2 is E. And it was seeing my OS on E (2).

It has been booting up as fast as ever and it is fixed from my point of view. I am guessing that running that Startup Repair option fixed something that the other process was also looking at to decide something was wrong with my boot information. In any case I will make a note to plug these drives in the correct SATA ports the next time I have to reinstall from scratch.

[B16Enk]

Cool!

Yes this is why I (and Jabo) always unplug all drives except the one we want an OS on.

And also why I now scrub the disk clean of all partitions too.

Once burnt, twice shy

[Snacko]

If you unplug all drives except the one that you are installing an OS on, do you plug it in the SATA port that you will keep it on?

For example, say you have Win7 on drive 0 and want to install another OS on drive 1 (D:). Do you leave it on the second SATA port and leave the fist port (where your disk 0 C: was) empty?

Just curious..

[B16Enk]

Ahh, yes a good question.

When installing first OS then plug into SATA/PATA 0.

When doing a dual boot scenario you have two choices:

1. Leave disks as is and install 2nd OS, this way you have a single boot loader and a choice of OS at start (of course this would require the oldest installed first so:
   XP then install Vista/7 etc.
2. Unplug primary SATA/PATA 0 but leave the other drive on SATA/PATA 1
   Configure BIOS to boot from above disk, this is useful if you want to install XP after 7 and use the BIOS boot choice option (some more modern BIOS have a BBS key for this).

If you moved the 2nd OS to SATA/PATA 0 then it would be the only bootable OS unless to change boot order in BIOS.

[Jabo]

Interesting about that 100MB partition Rog. Of course, I am using Ultimate and BitLocker so...Now I've looked more closely at the Disk Management plugin, the 100MB partition is missing 'cos I have a 50GB XP partition at the front of the disk. So I'm obviously talking rubbish - but it is 2:45 here.

Amen to the 'Once burnt' too.

Jabo