Rollback RX vs GRUB

[lunatic59]

I read through a couple tutorials, but I think this one is the easiest to follow and covers all the bases.

Restore GRUB2 after installing Windows

 

[jefboyardee]

Never mind. After googling that question and seeing a pile of mind-numbing terminal text suggestions, I just installed Ubuntu alongside Windows and Mint. Then, when Grub re-awoke, I launched Mint, then Grub-Customizer, then tailored the three as I saw fit. I'll probably never use Ubuntu but it's there if I ever need it.

 

[jefboyardee]

Another... it finally occurred to me that I didn't have to install Ubuntu at all to get to Grub and Grub-Customizer. I could've just launched one of my distro USBs. So I deleted the Ubuntu partition, launched via USB and got all that working right.

But now, and this one is new to me, I can't meld that ex-Ubuntu free space back into the Windows partition from whence it came. Whether I try to format it or delete it, I get a space problem notification:





I rebooted with the GParted DVD and was able to format it to NTFS, so I can use it as a spare, but I still couldn't merge into C:.

Am I missing some obvious trick here?

 

[jefboyardee]

And later, I got this:

 

[Joelgp83]

Alright, boot into win7 and fire up disk management.

Right-click the missing space> Delete Volume, if you haven't already. This should revert it to unallocated space.

Now, this next step will only work if the windows partition directly preceeds the missing space.

Right click your existing win7 partition> Extend Volume. Use the default values listed and click ok.

BAM! Space reclaimed.

 

[jefboyardee]

this next step will only work if the windows partition directly preceeds the missing space.

I think that's what it had been, but that's certainly what it is now. The first two are Windows, the third is the partition in question, the last two are Linux. When I unload the crap I've already stashed there, I'll try it... thx.

 

[lunatic59]

Windows disk management rounds volume sizes and depending where the free space (deleted partition) meets the next volume, it might round up so that the space it's trying to reclaim is actually larger than the space available.

If you still get the goofy "not enough space" error, when you get to the expand volume screen, try shrinking down the space to reclaim by 100k or so.

 

[jefboyardee]

Still getting the 'unexpected error' popup, so I can't even try to delete or resize that partition. Can't find anything relevant in the suggested Event Log. Must have disabled some required service er sumthin...

 

[lunatic59]

Could be that Winders is gettin' confused by 5 primary partitions. It usually only lets you have 4. Boot into linux and use gParted to delete your extra data partition (Elbo? can't read the screen, it's too small ). Then boot back into Windows and see if you still get the error.

 

[jefboyardee]

This was unexpected... I googled 'windows 7' 'disk management' 'unexpected error.' That led me to install the free flavor of AOMEI Partition Assistant. And by golly, it actually worked... it merged the two partitions, to do the stuff Disk Management refused to do!

 

[jefboyardee]

A big however: I rebooted into Linux Mint, launched its GParted just to confirm that, but the 'elbo' partition is still there! Rebooted back to Win7, launched Disk Mgmt again and it still shows as not there. What the...

 

[jefboyardee]

Tried again. All my Windows stuff (Disk Mgmt, Aomei, Win Exp, etc) say there is one big Arse partition and no smaller Elbo. Reboot to Linux/GParted and it's still there. From there, I can remove the partition and make it unallocated, but it's still there as something. But it's not adjacent there and offers no merge-type options.

Makes no sense -- how can this be? How can I fix it?

 

[jefboyardee]

Just booted off the GParted DVD, and for what it's worth, it agrees with its Linux equivalent. I'll try and stop talking to myself for a while..

 

[Joelgp83]

Sounds like partition assistant attempted to just simply overlay a partition table instead of actually modify it.

 

[jefboyardee]

That sounds undesirable and if it is, can I fix it?

 

[jefboyardee]

And while I'm stumbling over things, I notice that my C: drive is not marked as active. Is that because Grub has taken over that responsibility?

 

[Joelgp83]

That sounds undesirable and if it is, can I fix it?

Not sure. Check to see if partition assistant can undo the changes itself.

No, I wouldn't worry about the lack of the active flag on your windows partition if it can still boot.

Finally, read this. It may shed some light on the wackiness you're experiencing.

 

[jefboyardee]

Nope, Aomei doesn't see it and offers nothing to undo what it can't see, I does, however seem to a be a handy utility; even made a startup CD of it.

I bet if I marked C: as active, my Grub would die, so I'm ignoring it.

And I suppose I could just ignore this extra-drive-depending-on-how-I-look-at-it too. But it sure makes me curious...

 

[Joelgp83]

Did you read the link I gave you? Apparantly, if you try to use Gparted to modify a WinXP (and, to a lesser extent, Win7/Vista) partition from Linux, you'll need to boot winxp twice, during which chkdsk will activate to confirm the integrity of the newly sized partition, the hard disk communication driver gets reinstallled to accomodate the new size, and other silliness that windows must do to make sure everyone's on the same page.

I suspect that that the inverse of that happened, where linux is not on the same page for some reason.

Try manually running chkdsk /f. It'll probably schedule a check at the start of the next reboot. Do that and let it finish, then check to see if Disk Management or Partition Assistant show anything different.

 

[jefboyardee]

Did you read the link I gave you?

Yes, and have shrunk/extended/added/deleted partitions several times before this happened. That makes me suspect Aomei, since it's the only thing I did differently. I think I'm about to ask them about this. Also, I have rebooted several times since I used it, some to switch to Linux or the GParted CD, some just to reboot back into Win 7 HP... same result every time.

I suspect that that the inverse of that happened, where linux is not on the same page for some reason.

Agreed. Specifically, Nemo (Mint's file manager), GParted in Linux and CD still see those two partitions. Everything booted on Windows just sees one extended (merged) NTFS C: drive. (In both cases, plus the ext4 linux partitions.)

Try manually running chkdsk /f. It'll probably schedule a check at the start of the next reboot. Do that and let it finish, then check to see if Disk Management or Partition Assistant show anything different.

As I recall, it didn't impose a chkdsk on me like it does when I install a new distro. I've since tried defragging, scannow and chkdsk, all with no problems reported.

This just gets stranger and stranger, because although the OSes completely disagree, everything seems to be working normally -- everything in Windows consistently agrees that it's one partition, everything outside thinks it's two.

 

[Joelgp83]

Holy crap. I took one of my xp drives, and, in an experiment relating to some other project I've been working on (that's a story/question for another thread ), used gparted to shrink it by approximately 100 mb. Been getting weird pauses and complaints of an invalid boot.ini file since then.

Research indicated that error can be caused by fragmentation of boot.ini, so when I went to windows' defrag to analyze that, it reported 31% fragmentation on what is only a 3 week old xp install!

So in short, try defragging, it may report abnormally high fragmentation as a result of partitioning / merging.

 

[iowabowtech]

I've run into a similar thing on USB memory sticks. The only workaround I've found is to use windows to completely reformat the entire drive, which isn't a great scenario for you since its now merged with C:

 

[jefboyardee]

The only workaround I've found is to use windows to completely reformat the entire drive, which isn't a great scenario for you since its now merged with C:

I've formatted it from the Linux side several times but the Windows side doesn't notice anything. Just to confirm its weirdness, I made a text file in Linux and saved it in the mystery partition that Windows can't see. Rebooted into Windows, searched that file and of course, it doesn't exist.

Starting to think the only cure is reinstall Win7, using their 'remove everything' option to start it off. Then reinstall Linux Mint and and and and...

It's hard to consider starting over when nothing is actually broken. I have sent a note to Aomei, asking if they could possibly be the cause of this impossibility.

 

[jefboyardee]

try defragging, it may report abnormally high fragmentation as a result of partitioning / merging.

I've used MyDefrag and, on the advice of that article you provided, Auslogics. Neither reported anything odd, neither helped with this problem or whatever we're calling it.

 

[jefboyardee]

And, for what it's worth, I did those defrags in safe mode. And while I was in that mode, I checked Disk Management to see if it said anything different, but it didn't.