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Thread: Opinions of System Reserved in Windows 7

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    42

    Lightbulb Opinions of System Reserved in Windows 7

    Hi friends

    One day when I was working with VirtualBox and made a new machine there came up one quite serious problem

    It was the fact that Windows 7 want's to automatically create one extra System Reserved partition next to the real one which we been used to.
    (This occur if create the new partition table with the Windows 7 CD).

    So, now afterwords when made a clone of the drive were Windows 7 was installed it seemed difficult to boot this new cloned image in a new created machine. Nothing worked as it should and Windows 7 could only open up the Repair tool feature and tried to recover without success.

    After a while it hitted me that I could start the virtual machine with a Live CD (iso) in the CD emulator. I had Paragon Partition Manager 10 for virtual machines, so I used it to see what was wrong and made a boot from the CD. First I couldn't see the problem as my real Windows 7 partition looked all fine and was marked as C:\ drive.

    I made many attempts in repair and update MBR, test surface and so on but it doesn't seemed to help at all. Then I realized that System Reserved are known as the Boot partition in another name.

    And as Windows always wants to the C drive I changed and replaced the letters from D:\ which the System Reserved had got during the clone process over to C:\. I made the same with the real Windows 7 partition which had got the letter C:\ and replaced it to D:\.

    After this I restarted my virtual machine and everything worked excellent.

    During one test it also seemed like that the System Reserved partition, has to and must be marked as an Active partition orelse it can't boot.

    Myself have been using Windows 7 Ultimate, don't know how it looks like in all other version which don't have the BitLocker feature but heard this might exist even in Professional and assume it then should be created in all versions of Windows 7 as System Reserved contains features for Bootfiles, Repair (in all versions ?) and BitLocker functionality (in Ultimate, Business & Enterprise).

    Futher on if consider how many slots MBR have support for and what might happen in a "dual/multi boot" when Windows 7 wants to install one extra partition with default label "System Reserved".

    MBR can only use 4 primary partition slots and Windows can only become installed on a primary partition. Another boot map might be 3 primary slots and one extended slot which can contain additional sub logical drives, as many there is free letters for in the drive table.

    Ok there shouldn't be any issues in the first setup but what will happen in the next try..Can many setups of Windows 7 partitions use one single System Reserved or does it want's to create a new one if installing through the CD in default mode and when not using other partition manager tools?
    Does the risk makes sence in have multiple System Reserved?

    Finally, the question of the MBR and how many primary slots it has...Why does Microsoft developed Windows 7 with a feature that decrease the possibility in how many OS it support to have installed on the same machine? I mean when install Windows 7 it wants half of the primary slots MBR has to offer and whos to blame for MBR hasn't become interesting in develop and improve for more slots, guess there is some sort of standardisation involved like MBR can't support bigger partitions than 2TB.

    Feeling very curious in hear opinions/thoughts of this issue and what can be done regarding all this different aspects when dealing with clones & dual/multi boot into different host OS or virtual guests VM machines.


  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    New Delhi
    Posts
    2,042
    First , thank you for such a big detailed post. A bit too technical even for me . I will try to add something to it not sure how successful i will be.

    Well, windows reserved partition can be removed if you do not have Bitlocker feature with your windows 7. As you said, Reserved contains features for Bootfiles, Repair and BitLocker functionality (in Ultimate, Business & Enterprise).

    Also, a disk can not have more than 4 primary partitions.

    Regarding Virtual box, I never have used it but i am on VM which works almost like virtualbox. I am still to test more than 2 virtual OS in VMware but as far as i know we can have as many Virtual OS running inside a host OS with a VMware Virtual machine and I didnt find any problem running them. I cant say about Virtualbox as I have never tested it extensively.

    As far as I can think of only one partition system reserved will be created even if you install multiple windows 7. I am just predicting it but someone else has to confirm it.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
    Location
    Malaysia
    Posts
    58
    very nice. can you safely defrag it or reduce it size without affecting the perormance of win7? might break something..just a new user of win7 x32 here....

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