# [SOLVED] system reserved Drive Letter problems



## trif (Aug 20, 2009)

I have windows 7,

When the system started up today the automated system recovery ran but said it couldn't fix the problem,

The error message looked like:

Problem Signature
Problem Event Name: StartupRepairOffline
Problem Signature 01: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 02: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 03: unknown
Problem Signature 04: 21201026
Problem Signature 05: AutoFailover
Problem Signature 06: 23
Problem Signature 07: CorruptFile
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

OS version was much newer though



After this I looked around on the net and found a suggestion to delete: bootcat.cache
that didn't work either,


*A bit of messing around in the command prompt of the recovery console later i realised that the drive letters were wrong!*

the C: drive is now the system reserved location and the D: drive is my old C: drive,

It was suggested this causes problems as nothing in boot.ini and the registry is in the right place,


I tried DISKPART and renamed the partitions do D and C (how they should be) but the flags look wrong, if i diskpart this PC at work i see:


```
DISKPART> select disk 0
DISKPART> detail disk

SAMSUNG HD103SJ
Disk ID: F0000000
Type   : ATA
Status : Online
Path   : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#ATA(C00T00L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only  : No
Boot Disk  : Yes
Pagefile Disk  : Yes
Hibernation File Disk  : No
Crashdump Disk  : Yes
Clustered Disk  : No

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 1         RECOVERY     NTFS   Partition      8 GB  Healthy    System
  Volume 2     C   OS           NTFS   Partition    922 GB  Healthy    Boot

DISKPART>
```
dead PC looks something like:


```
DISKPART> select disk 0
DISKPART> detail disk

SAMSUNG HD103SJ
Disk ID: F0000000
Type   : ATA
Status : Online
Path   : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#ATA(C00T00L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only  : No
Boot Disk  : No
Pagefile Disk  : No
Hibernation File Disk  : No
Crashdump Disk  : No
Clustered Disk  : No

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 1     C   System res  FAT32  Partition    100 MB  Healthy    
  Volume 2     D              NTFS   Partition    465 GB  Healthy    

DISKPART>
```

When i tried changing the drive letters it only really made the automated recovery fail in a different way, i can't assign the "System" and "Boot" flags or remove the letter from the system reserved bit and make the OS drive stay as C over a reboot

Please let me know what else i can do?

Thanks


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## Jonathan_King (Apr 3, 2010)

*Re: system reserved Drive Letter problems*

It may be easiest to just remove the system reserved partition for now. 

System Reserved Partition - Delete

If you need your system reserved partition for some reason, just post.


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## trif (Aug 20, 2009)

*Re: system reserved Drive Letter problems*

boot.ini listed that partition as the location of the boot loader, wont it break everything if i delete it?

currently bootrec /RebuildBcd returns:

"Total identified Windows installations: 0"

will deleting the system reserved partition allow this to find my OS again?


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## trif (Aug 20, 2009)

*Re: system reserved Drive Letter problems*

just tried deleting the system reserved partition, the automated system recovery on the CD didn't do anything to it afterwards, said it was fine but when it rebooted to the hard disk it just loading up the system recovery even with the correct drive set at C:


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## Jonathan_King (Apr 3, 2010)

*Re: system reserved Drive Letter problems*

Try running another Startup Repair from the disc.

Also, run RAM and hard drive tests.

RAM - Test with Memtest86+ - Windows 7 Forums

I recommend the *DOS version of SeaTools* for you.


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## trif (Aug 20, 2009)

*Re: system reserved Drive Letter problems*

after the startup repair from the disk (which found my OS no problems) the PC restared and gave me the select boot OS screen with only once choice, 

Windows 7 (recovered)

which is my OS, however when i selected this it booted straight into the "repair your PC" ASR window

this wasn't the ASR from the DvD but looks exactly the same, its almost like the address of the ASR has replaced the address of my OS in the boot information as it will never even try booting my OS, any ideas how i can fix this?


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## trif (Aug 20, 2009)

*Re: system reserved Drive Letter problems*

3 passes on memtest, no errors

no luck with seatools, can't get it to work off a usb stick at all, the usb stick just boots to command prompt and none of the seatools stuff will run, nothing helpful on google either

dont have any CDs or a cd writer

i dont think its the disk, i put it in another PC and managed to copy some files off, thinking of just installing windows 7 on it again next to the old install and fudging back in what i can, like my userprofile and programs, anything that has problems with the new registry i'll just do repair installs on


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## Jonathan_King (Apr 3, 2010)

*Re: system reserved Drive Letter problems*

Try installing the Windows version of SeaTools to the USB stick, then boot up to the repair or installation DVD. Open a command prompt, and run the *SeaToolsforWindows.exe* file on the USB drive.

If you want to reinstall, try a custom install. It's the same as a clean install, except that you don't format or delete the partition before installing to it; you install right on top of it.


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## trif (Aug 20, 2009)

*Re: system reserved Drive Letter problems*

thanks for the tip about seatools, that was really annoying me, HOWEVER:

i fixed it!!!  it was just a bad driver that wasn't letting windows boot

how i fixed it:

in the end i did this:
note, even tho i wasn't sure it would find an OS cos i'd been getting the 0 windows installs found, as soon as i deleted the ****ed BCD and remade it there was 1 os found


> At the Command Prompt, type C:, and press ENTER.
> 
> Type bcdedit, then press ENTER.
> 
> ...


after that when the PC started it said windows could not start because of a corrupt or missing driver AND TOLD ME WHICH DRIVER IT WAS

remember this?:


> Problem Signature 01: 6.1.7600.16385
> Problem Signature 02: 6.1.7600.16385
> Problem Signature 03: unknown
> Problem Signature 04: 21201026
> ...


if it had told me which file it was 3 days ago i could have fixed it in minutes,

anyway i booted the windows disk again planning to use the command prompt there to copy a working version of the file off another PC, however it wanted to "repair" my boot sector and restart, i checked what it wanted to add and it was the automated system recover bit, i skipped that bit and got the command prompt up, copied the file off a usb stick over the corrupt one and PC booted first time, was wicked! 

i'm unsure why it always booted into ASR straight away and didn't tell me which driver was broken etc


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## Jonathan_King (Apr 3, 2010)

*Re: system reserved Drive Letter problems*

Interesting, I wonder how the BCD got corrupted in the first place.

In any case, I'm glad you got it sorted out, let us know if you need anything else!


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## trif (Aug 20, 2009)

i'm not sure either, unless it was when that driver was corrupted but i think its more likely that happened during the install, i wonder if ASR did something strange to it, but without a MS programmer we'll never know ^^


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