New to EightForums, Partition Questions!

JWhite1089 · Apr 6, 2013

Hello all, this is my first post on EightForums and I am pleased to find such great forum for Windows 8 users! I have been using Windows 8 since December 2012 and I must say that I enjoy it quite a bit. Recently, for self education purposes, I have installed Ubuntu 12.10 to dual boot with Windows 8 UEFI. I ran into a bunch of problems and finally reformatted the drive to start over, but I have a question about the partitions listed on my HDD..

Are these the partitions that come from the HP factory with Windows 8 preinstalled? Here are the same partitions listed in Disk Management, with partition 3 hidden for some reason? Why is this?

So.. The first two partitions listed as 400MB and 260MB cannot be modified at all. If I right click, the only option I get is Help. Then C: and D: are my two primary. I could have sworn that these first two partitions were never there before, although I may be wrong. Also, partition 3 listed in the Command Prompt shot above is not listed in Disk Management. Why is it hidden? Notice also that Recovery (D: is listed twice in Disk Management, is this normal? And does Windows 8 normally create 5 partitions on preinstalled applications? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm trying to figure out if I have done something to cause this or if they are supposed to be this way. Thanks!

znod · Apr 6, 2013

If on an OEM preinstalled Win8 under UEFI, then you would not have NTSF partitions. Looks like you are installed under legacy BIOS, although some partitions from your OEM install appear to persist (i.e., the first two partitions may be GPT). The four partitions related to an individual's (but not an OEM's UEFI installation are:

Paritition 1 - Recovery
Partition 2 - System - The EFI System partition that contains the NTLDR, HAL, Boot.txt, and other files that are needed to boot the system, such as drivers.
Partition 3 - MSR - The Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition that reserves space on each disk drive for subsequent use by operating system software.
Partition 4 - Primary - Where Windows is to be installed to.

See snip below for more info on the partitions. In general, see UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 8 with.

Brink · Apr 6, 2013

Hello James,

This is normal for an OEM computer with Windows 8 preinstalled using UEFI. The OEM just adds the extra Factory Recovery partition.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorial...e-firmware-interface-install-windows-8-a.html

Paritition 1 (400 MB) - Recovery - Windows recovery environment at boot. (System Recovery Options)

Partition 2 (260 MB) - System - The EFI System partition that contains the NTLDR, HAL, Boot.txt, and other files that are needed to boot the system, such as drivers.

Partition 3 - MSR (Reserved) - The Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition that reserves space on each disk drive for subsequent use by operating system software. (Only seen during installation like below or in diskpart)

Partition 4 (C) - Primary - Where Windows 8 is installed.

Partition 5 (D) - OEM Factory Recovery - Used to reinstall Windows 8 to factory conditions.

11433d1353128496-uefi-unified-extensible-firmware-interface-install-windows-8-setup.png

Hope this helps,

Shawn

EDIT:
LOL, looks like znod and I were thinking alike.

JWhite1089 · Apr 6, 2013

Thanks so much to both of you, it does help indeed. I am much more confident that things are they way they should be

I had done extensive research on this but now that you mention it, I don't think I ever noticed if anyone was using UEFI when they were noting their partitions.

I do have another question though. Ubuntu is uninstalled and the partition has been formatted and expanded back onto my C: drive, but somehow Ubuntu (at least I think it's for Ubuntu, it reads Internal Hard Disk or Solid State Disk) is still listed in my boot loader multiple times. I downloaded EasyBCD 2.2 and the first thing that I noticed is that there are a total of ELEVEN (11) entries in my bootloader; 10 for Internal Hard Disk or Solid State Disk and one for Windows 8. I would imagine this is because I had installed Ubuntu multiple times in a few different ways so each time it created a new boot file on my windows partition, although I am certain I did not install Ubuntu 10 times. I have deleted them all from the boot entries in EasyBCD, but they come back every time I reboot. This is also the case when I interrupt startup and go to "Boot Devices," Internal Hard Disk or Solid State Disk is listed 10 times. I want to get rid of all of this garbage and make it 100% factory to bypass the boot menu and boot directly into Windows 8 wthout all of those other entries in the bootloader. My plan is to eventually reinstall Ubuntu and I know that all of these other files will be a problem.

SIW2 · Apr 6, 2013

You should be fine with Ubuntu 12.10 x64.

Strange situation with your boot menu.

You might bet better dioing it directly, using bcdedit.

Open an elevated command and type :

bcdedit /enum all >c:\bcdout.txt

you will find the entries in the text file and can get the identifiers from there to delete.

Brink · Apr 6, 2013

You're welcome James. Glad we could help.

I'm not an expert with Ubuntu, but go ahead and open an elevated command prompt, type bcdedit and press Enter, copy and paste the contents of the command prompt into a code box (# on toolbar) in your post when replying back.

We'll be happy to take a look at to see what we can do to help.

JWhite1089 · Apr 6, 2013

Brink said:
You're welcome James. Glad we could help.

I'm not an expert with Ubuntu, but go ahead and open an elevated command prompt, type bcdedit and press Enter, copy and paste the contents of the command prompt into a code box (# on toolbar) in your post when replying back.

We'll be happy to take a look at to see what we can do to help.

Thanks again to both of you for the suggestions. Before I read these posts I went to msconfig and selected to restore to default options. This seemed to fix my issue, although I just rebooted again and went into Boot Device and still saw one option to boot into Ubuntu, although when I selected it, it booted into Windows and this entry was not showing in bcdedit:

Firmware Boot Manager
---------------------
identifier {fwbootmgr}
displayorder {4fdde2b4-9f35-11e2-bec5-806e6f6e6963}
{4e653ac7-9f34-11e2-bec4-806e6f6e6963}
{4e653ac6-9f34-11e2-bec4-806e6f6e6963}
timeout 0
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2
path \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {e6541c78-28f3-11e2-ae82-e2723e509b98}
displayorder {current}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 30
displaybootmenu No

This looks correct, does it not? Please let me know if there's something that needs to be changed. Thanks!

SIW2 · Apr 7, 2013

Looks ok.

JWhite1089 · Apr 7, 2013

Rebooted to check again, interrupted startup, went to Boot Devices, and it listed as follows:

OS Boot Manager
Ubuntu (Hitachi *xxxxxxxxxxxx)
EFI File

*The x's represent a whole bunch of numbers I'm guessing a memory location on the disk?
When I select the Ubuntu entry it boots into Windows as if I hadn't entered Boot Devices at all, and aside from this aspect everything is booting correctly with no issues but I want this entry deleted. Any explanation is appreciated.

SIW2 · Apr 7, 2013

You might be better asking on Ubuntu forum - not many here are that familiar with ubuntu efiboot.

JWhite1089 · Apr 7, 2013

SIW2 said:
You might be better asking on Ubuntu forum - not many here are that familiar with ubuntu efiboot.

Ubuntu is no longer on my system, this is an issue with my Windows booting configuration still detecting an entry from Ubuntu. My question is related to making a change in the Windows operating system to remove all instances of the old Ubuntu system; I just need to know where to go or what could be causing it.

MrShowdown · Apr 7, 2013

You can try using this tool:
EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies

znod · Apr 7, 2013

JWhite1089 said:
Thanks so much to both of you, it does help indeed. I am much more confident that things are they way they should be

I had done extensive research on this but now that you mention it, I don't think I ever noticed if anyone was using UEFI when they were noting their partitions.

I do have another question though. Ubuntu is uninstalled and the partition has been formatted and expanded back onto my C: drive, but somehow Ubuntu (at least I think it's for Ubuntu, it reads Internal Hard Disk or Solid State Disk) is still listed in my boot loader multiple times. I downloaded EasyBCD 2.2 and the first thing that I noticed is that there are a total of ELEVEN (11) entries in my bootloader; 10 for Internal Hard Disk or Solid State Disk and one for Windows 8. I would imagine this is because I had installed Ubuntu multiple times in a few different ways so each time it created a new boot file on my windows partition, although I am certain I did not install Ubuntu 10 times. I have deleted them all from the boot entries in EasyBCD, but they come back every time I reboot. This is also the case when I interrupt startup and go to "Boot Devices," Internal Hard Disk or Solid State Disk is listed 10 times. I want to get rid of all of this garbage and make it 100% factory to bypass the boot menu and boot directly into Windows 8 wthout all of those other entries in the bootloader. My plan is to eventually reinstall Ubuntu and I know that all of these other files will be a problem.

You are very welome; hope it all is about to be sorted. I'll have to pass on the Ubuntu issues.

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