Windows 10: A plethora of partitions

Post installation of 16179.00 and cleanup, I noticed a lot of partitions(6). I marked two, not sure why they are there?? appreciate thoughts. Tx

My AU edition has four partitions. Recovery, Fat32, Other and C:

:)

 

Nokia Lumia 920 a plethora of issues after upgrading to Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1 + Lumia Denim

What I meant to say was ''Back-Up'' my phone.

Now here is the weird part, all issues I just described above just, and then just all the issues went just.



As you can see all applications are now installed, but the back-up issue persists...

 

A Plethora of issues with Windows 10.

Hi,

Welcome to Microsoft Community. I apologize for the inconvenience.

The issue that you are facing might be due to corruptions of user account.

I suggest you to check if you are facing the same issue in safe mode with networking.

Safe mode starts Windows in a basic state, using a limited set of files and drivers. It can help you troubleshoot problems on your PC. For example, if the problem doesn't happen in safe mode, you'll know default settings and basic device drivers aren't causing
the issue.

Start your PC in safe mode in Windows 10

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/windows-10/start-your-pc-in-safe-mode

If the issue persist, I suggest you to follow the below steps which will help you to create a new user account.

Follow the below methods.

Method 1:

Enable Built Admin account.

a) Press Windows and x
key together on your desktop screen.

b) Click on Command Prompt (admin).

c) Type: net user administrator /active: yes

Note: Please follow the same steps and type
net user administrator /active: no to disable admin account after the troubleshooting is done



Method 2:

From Built in administrator account create a new user account and transfer the profile data.

Please follow the steps below to do that:

a) Press Windows and x together and select Windows Explorer.

b) Click on View tab
and Click on Options at the top right corner.

c) Click the View tab, and then click
Show hidden files, folders, and drives.

d) Uncheck the box which states Hide protected operating system files.

e) Click Yes to confirm, and then click
OK.

f) Locate the C:\Users\Old_Username folder, where C is the drive that Windows is installed on, and Old Username is the name of the profile you want
to copy files from.

g) Select all of the files and folders in this folder, except the following files:



•Ntuser.dat

•Ntuser.dat.log

•Ntuser.ini



h) Right click and Select Copy.

i) Locate the C:\Users\New_Username folder, where C is the drive that Windows is installed on, and New Username is the name of the new user profile
you created.

j) Right click inside the folder and select
Paste.

k) Restart your PC and check if you are able to log in to default profile.

As you have also asked about the rollback options and backup, I suggest you to refer the below link and check if it helps you to go back to your previous version of Windows.

Refer the section Go back to your previous version of Windows

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/windows-10-recovery-options

Here is how you can back up your Windows 10 PC:

• Log on to your Windows 10 computer with an administrator account.
• Once on the desktop window, right-click the Start button (button with the Windows icon).
• From the displayed context menu, click Control Panel.
• On the Control Panel window, ensure that the View by type is set to
  Category.
• Click the System and Security category, and from the next window, click
  Security and Maintenance.
• From the bottom of the left pane of the opened Security and Maintenance window, click the
  File History link.
• Again, from the bottom of the left pane of the File History window, click the
  System Image Backup link.
• On the opened Create a system image window, from the available radio buttons representing their corresponding options, choose:

• On a hard disk – To save the created system image backup on a separate partition of the hard disk drive. (Make sure that the target partition has sufficient amount of disk space available to accommodate the backup image file.)
• On one or more DVDs – To create and write the system image backup on one or more blank writable DVDs.
• On a network location – And click the Browse button, select a network location, and provide required credentials to save the system image backup on any other computer or network attached storage (NAS).

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Guru Kiran

 

The 16 MB partition is the Microsoft System Reserved (MSR) partition that is allegedly required to be on all GPT partition type drives.
Understanding Disk Partitions

The 7.45 GB is not a partition. It is unallocated space which is just empty. You would have to move the 1.95 GB recovery partition to the end of the drive in order to add the 7.5 GB unallocated space to the C: drive partition.

 

Ok I did what you recommended, tx for that. I looked at a webpage titled "MS UEFI/GPT-based hard drive partitions" and for the recovery partition it recommends that this partition should be placed immediately after the windows partition.

I now have a 2 partitions marked recovery, one at the beginning and one at the end. I don't believe a need both??

 

The 2nd 1.99 GB recovery partition is likely the recovery partition that came with the computer from the factory. It is highly unlikely that without some advanced commands or original factory software it could even be used. It's up to you whether to delete it or not. Delete it and you lose what little possibility there was of restoring the factory software back onto the computer.

It won't affect Windows 10 on the computer, you can still reload that in the future. And you should be able to purchase the factory recovery disc for the computer if you really wanted to for some reason. None of my computers have the factory recovery partition left on them, but most of my retail computers do have images saved on external storage (NAS) of their hard drives before I even logged onto them the first time, though I have never needed to go back to any of those images.

 

At 2GB, that is too small to be a vendor recovery partition I would say.

It is more likely it contains vendor 'crapware'.

 

Good point. You can always assign a drive letter to it and see what's there. Or use the explore function of MiniTool Partition Wizard which also shows all the hidden folders and files easily without assigning a driver letter. Also, some manufacturers put their recovery programs in a separate partition from the actual recovery images, so that might be what is there, which would be useless without the recovery images.

 

Dell puts a 1.6 GB Recovery partition on some of its systems, after the larger, image partition. What it is used for I do not know for sure, but the systems do have a diagnostic which can be used from a boot selection.

 

My computer is an assemblage of parts gathered from various vendors, self assembled, so there is no factory "stuff" ? I "explored" the two partitions marked recovery, can't see what is in the folders. Not enough brain power here to understand what it means. :-(.

 

Well, that is completely backwards from what I expected. From the looks of it, partition 1 is the useless partition. In order to reclaim that space, though, you would have to move the EFI System partitions and the MSR partitions to the front of the drive after you deleted partition 1. That can sometimes be very problematic. So, I would either just leave that partition or delete it and leave it unallocated space. It's only 500MB. If you get down to where you are missing that 500MB space then you should be thinking about moving some data or getting a larger drive anyway .

The last partition, 1.99GB recovery partition appears to be the real recovery partition in use. It's a mystery how it got to be 1.99GB in size. You can use the Partition Wizard program to shrink it to 450 MB (moving the left edge or the front of the partition back, to the right). Then add the 1.5GB of extra space created to the end of C: drive.

If you ever decide to do a clean install of Windows, just erase that whole drive, deleting all partitions on it, then select the unallocated space to install to and Windows will set it up correctly.

 

I have one partition. That's it.

 

Yes, Tx for that again. Since this drive is a clone of my real insider drive, I feel somewhat comfortable to mess with it a little. What if I did an image of it right now and unchecked the 1st partition so that it would not be part of the image. When restoring, do you think that Macrium would move the remainder to the front or just leave an un-partition space.?

 

After "adjusting" it for more than an hour without real success, I let the magic of Macrium reflect figure it out. I made an image as I had it before, booted to the original insider disk, used the restore function to write that back to the clone version and it is back to normal. The 1.99Gb partition is gone. *Biggrin

 

K. Now for one last test. In a Command Prompt (Admin) or Powershell (Admin) run:

reagectc /info

and see if it says if Windows Recovery Environment is enabled or disabled