Windows 10: Two copies of BOOTMGR???

Hi

I have a simple question which I hope has a simple answer but since it involves BOOTMGR I somehow suspect its not quite so simple as I hope.

I have Windows 10 Pro and for some time I've been a little puzzled by the fact that I have a copy of BOOTMGR in both my "Reserved Partition" and the root of Drive C:. Its not over bothered me as I tend to leave it well alone. However, could someone please tell me where my BOOTMGR file should be as I've never actually found a definitive answer on this. I am not aware that I have done anything to copy the file anywhere but I now find I have a copy in both my ACTIVE partition ("Reserved Partition") AND my Windows 10 BOOT partition (DriveC).

So could someone please tell me: should I have two BOOTMGR files and if it should only be one, where should it be located? Also, is it safe to simply delete the incorrectly located file?

Any help would be most appreciated. Many thanks.

Tracey

PS My husband also has a BOOTMGR file in the roots of both Windows 7 and Windows 10 (Windows 7 is his active partition). Is this right?

:)

 

Two copies of "Messaging" - how do I remove one of them?

Hi there,

I have a Palm Treo Pro running windows mobile 6.1 and today it's gone a little haywire.. First I couldn't make calls.. then it froze and I had to restart by removing the battery.. after doing so I was then guided through the windows mobile setup (setting time/date
etc.. ) .. after this I thought it was fine.. everything was still there.. my contacts and all.. but my welcome page had been reset to default.. however, I could no longer access my sms's! I discovered there was 2 copies of Messaging in my programs folder..

How can I remove one of these.. can't seem to find any option to do this.. is that actually the solution? Or does anyone else have another suggestion?

TIA,

Tom.

 

Two copies of "Messaging" - how do I remove one of them?

Thanks for the info bro.. Neither of the 2 shortcuts worked.. so I ended up doing a hard reset.. works fine now.. and thanks for the great links - I have now installed the microsft phone backup software.. works like a charm... loving it.

 

@dalchina
You are showing OP the disk layout of GPT style installation while her Windows is MBR.

@OP
Yes, I have seen what you described. If Disk management shows the Reserved partition is active then IMO, you don't need the Bootmgr from C: Here's my Windows 7 MBR:
Reserved Partition shows:



and root of C: is:



Note that in C: there's no Bootmgr. Sometimes if you use command such as bcdedit to look at the bootmgr , it does create a backup copy of Bootmgr.

From C drive, rename Bootmgr as Bootmgr.BAK then reboot. If it still works then you can safely delete it.

 

@topgundcp - out of curiosity, now I've deleted my UEFI post, how other than intuition do you know it's MBR without a screenshot? Because only 2 partitions are referred to?

 

Because OP talked about "Reserved Partition" & "Active". Both do not exist with GPT style.
And yes, MBR has only 2 partitions: Reserved and C drive.
Cheers !!!

 

Hi

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Yes, my Windows partitions are indeed MBR although I do have two 3TB disks which are GPT. I have now captured a graphic of the partition contents and I shall endeavour to post them along with the post. I hope you can see what I mean about the two copies of BOOTMGR. Any further info required then let me know.







I also thought it may help to include a snapshot of my disk layout from Disk Management as below:





Tracey

 

From disk management. I can tell that you initially have Windows 7 installed then installed Windows 10, that will give you dual boot. As I said, installing Windows 10 with an extra Recovery partition created, also might be the cause to have a backup copy of Bootmgr created. Since System Reserved partition is marked "Active" that means the Bootmgr is used from this partition.
There is a log file Reflect_install.log, if I am not mistaken, you also have Macrium installed in Windows 10. If you've already have a backup image then go ahead and delete Bootmgr from Windows 10 C drive. Reboot to see if it works. You can always restore from the backup.

WARNING: Since your disk 0 is already max out the number of partitions(4) for MBR. You might encounter problem with future update.

I can also see that your disk 1 MBR max out with 4 partitions. Should convert it to GPT so you can create more primary partitions without getting into business of logical drive....GPT support up to 128 primary partitions.
Your disk 2 & 3 are GPT so they are OK.

 

Hi

Yes, I'll agree regarding the partitions on Drive 0 but why should I encounter problems with a future update and do you mean Windows 10 update? If necessary I'll remove Windows 7 to make space if a partition is required for any future update. As it is I'm debating whether to remove Windows 7 now. I should also add that Windows 10 installed the Recovery partition -- not me -- I didn't tell it to install it!

As for Drive 1, if you look carefully you will see it has only logical drives. Over the years I have learnt a bit about partitioning and know full well that to have five partitions on a drive at least one of them must be logical but they all are. Therefore, Drive 1 is MBR. I have had this arrangement for many years and do NOT keep any data (unless I can't avoid it) on Drive C. I keep C: as much as possible purely for Windows hence the small size of the partition (approx 29GB).

I don't know how you work it out that Drive 2 is GPT but I can assure you it is MBR. As I said in my initial post, my GPT drives are both 3TB one of which is an external drive. I also have two other external drives of 1 TB each not shown on the Disk Management graphic. Both are MBR with just one primary partition each. Both are used for backups. For security purposes I disconnect my external drives when not in use since they are only used for backups and I have ALL the drives shown in the above graphic backed up.

Having got that out of the way -- when I feel brave I'll probably go ahead and delete BOOTMGR in Drive C but just at the moment its 3.15am (I can't sleep) and I just can't face such a problem at present so I'll leave that for a future time. Nevertheless, thanks for taking the time to help out. Very much appreciated.

Tracey

 

With major update, extra Recovery partition(s) will be created and will run into problem dealing with logical drive. The Recovery partition was created by Windows to store WinRE.wim which is a WinPE and the size is more than 300MB, your Reserved partition is only 100MB under Windows 7, not enough room. A normal Windows 10 installation will have 550MB Reserved Partition and C drive. That's why it always better to deal GPT so you can take advantage of having up to 128 primary partitions on one single disk.

.
That was the old technology and still work because of the primary partition limitation of MBR. Just thought it would be cleaner not having to deal with logical.

Because you said you had other 2's as GPT so I misunderstood that. With HD < 2.2 TB in size, it does not matter if you initialize it as MBR or GPT. The only way to find out is to right click on the HD->Properties or change the top view to show view disk list then you'll know exactly what type they are.




In conclusion,
If your HD/SSD is < 2.2TB and don't plan to create more than 4 primary partitions then it does not matter if you use MBR or GPT.

If your HD/SSD is > 2.2TB you must use GPT.

 

Ok, I'm up for learning about running with UEFI instead of BIOS.

So how do I do it. I've reason to believe its not just a case of converting drives to GPT since I understand there are settings on the Mobo that need to be set. Elsewhere I've seen references that imply you need to reinstall Windows 10 as well. Can you therefore please run it by me as to how I can convert from running with BIOS to UEFI including any setting up of the Mobo. And yes, I know all Mobo firmwares are different but run it by me in general terms. Also if this is not the thread to do this and I need to start a new thread then please let me know.

Alternatively, if there is already a tutorial on this or other threads that have covered the topic please point me in the right direction and I'll take a look at what they have to say.

Tracey

 

Here's the tutorial:

Convert Windows 10 from Legacy BIOS to UEFI without Data Loss Installation Upgrade Tutorials

NOTE: This tutorial works if the Windows disk partitions layout correctly. Some people do have problem with it.
And definitely you will have too based on the layout of your Disk 0.

 

The only partition which will boot on a Legacy install is an Active partition. There are many files kept on the OS partition for use as backups or placed there for some other reason.

If you reset the default setting of hide protected system files, you will not see it.

 

Why? What's wrong with the layout? What will MBR2GPT do that will cause difficulty? What do I need to do to sort it?

 

The standard layout for MBR with fresh install of Windows should be:
550MB Reserved Partition and C drive. The command MBR2GPT might not like the way your disk layout, small 100MB Reserved partition and might need a new Recovery partition created but your disk is already max out the # of partitions.
The Layout for GPT is:
500MB Recovery, 100MB EFI, 16MB MSR then C drive.

Well, you can read the tutorial to find out what kind of problem people had and post the question there since this thread is not related to this new subject.
Good luck.