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dan99t
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What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Fri Feb 21, 2014 1:55 am

Hi,

I have a HDD with 5 Partitions & have Win-7 Ultimate 64 bit.

My HDD was acting funny so I made it a slave drive & using another Backed Up HDD, deleted its OS partition & installed Win-7. Previously I used to do it the same way except I used to format that deleted partition & create C: Volume & then install Win-7 in that Formatted Volume.

But this time I installed win-7 in an unformatted space so it automatically created a system partition of 100 mb & then it created Partition C: & windows was installed there.

My system is still acting weird & I need to install win-7 again.

Can you guys show me the proper way to install it ?

I do have AOMEI Partition manager.

Many Thanks
 
blitzy
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Fri Feb 21, 2014 2:13 am

The default single volume windows installs to should be fine, it sounds more like the drive itself may be defective. I would try running some drive diagnostic tools to check if there are any faults such as bad sectors, or if there are SMART warnings. Most manufacturers e.g. Western Digital or Seagate etc will have free tools on their website to diagnose problems.

If you can elaborate on what is going wrong with the system we might be able to give you something else to try.
 
dan99t
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Fri Feb 21, 2014 2:40 am

blitzy wrote:
The default single volume windows installs to should be fine, it sounds more like the drive itself may be defective. I would try running some drive diagnostic tools to check if there are any faults such as bad sectors, or if there are SMART warnings. Most manufacturers e.g. Western Digital or Seagate etc will have free tools on their website to diagnose problems.

If you can elaborate on what is going wrong with the system we might be able to give you something else to try.


Certainly & Thanks in advance.

Here are the problems I am facing & when similar problems occurred before I used to reinstall win-7 & they used to go away but not this time.

1. even though I have set double click to open files & folders, now I barely highlight the file or folder & it opens quickly without double clicking. I did change mouse property to make it slower but then some folders do open normally but some applications still are jittery & act like you are touching an electric wire. They open up or close just by touching them.

2. I use " snagit " ( a very popular screen capture program a lot ) where I have to drag the mouse to capture a portion of window. Now I can barely drag the mouse. After just dragging it a little, it captures hardly anything & reacts quickly.

3. While highlighting a paragraph or a line in a webpage & a word document, it cuts off few words or rearranges words in a document.

These are some that I can think of right now but they are enough to drive me nuts.
 
Melvar
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Fri Feb 21, 2014 3:24 am

I sounds like a mouse problem to me. Try a different mouse if you have one, or if your mouse has some software that's always running try closing it.
 
dan99t
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Fri Feb 21, 2014 4:03 am

Melvar wrote:
I sounds like a mouse problem to me. Try a different mouse if you have one, or if your mouse has some software that's always running try closing it.


Good Idea.

Let me see if I have a spare mouse.

Will report back soon.

Thanks
 
blitzy
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Fri Feb 21, 2014 4:16 am

Yea this sounds more likely to be a problem with the mouse, or possibly a port if it's ps/2. Not sure if USB could cause that type of problem. Have you tried borrowing another mouse to see if that problem still happen with a different mouse? Could be something flaky about the motherboard, hard to say. Strange that the problem went away in the past by reformatting. I wonder if dodgy RAM could cause such a symptom? Im not sure, but it doesnt really sound like a disk issue but it wont hurt to check.
 
Melvar
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Fri Feb 21, 2014 4:22 am

blitzy wrote:
or possibly a port if it's ps/2.


That's a good point. I once had a computer start acting so strangely that I assumed it must have some sort of virus, but it was actually the keyboard causing repeated spurious inputs, doing things like opening new browser windows and closing programs a few seconds after I opened them. Plugging the keyboard into the other PS2 port fixed it.
 
dan99t
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Fri Feb 21, 2014 5:00 am

Really appreciate all your view points. Learning a Lot too.

My mouse is a USB one.

My keyboard is a PS2 & I am using PS2 to USB Converter. It is really old but very comfortable so I threw aside the new one that came with this system.

I had a new spare mouse & just plugged it in and at least temporarily it looks like the drag problem has gone away. I also changed back the mouse setting to normal in control panel too. You guys are geniuses. I do not want to get too excited yet though because tomorrow when I use the other applications, I would know more.

But I do want to explore your other suggestions & need help.

(1) How do I check for disk problems ? Should I check only OS partition or all partitions ? Can I do that while the OS is there & data on other partitions ?
(2) I am not a techy so I bought this Dell workstation which is about 1.5 years old & Under warranty so I can ask them to check for more complex problems. So what should I ask them to do ? Check motherboard, RAM or something else ?
(3) I do want to format this partition & clean install windows-7 again so should I delete that partition & install OS or should I delete it, format it, create a C: volume & install after that ? Installing directly on a deleted volume creates a small 100 MB system partition. What does it do & do I need that ? In past I did it the second method & it did not create that small 100 MB system partition.

Also do I need to make it active or primary before installing OS & if yes how do I do that ?

Thank You So Much.
 
Flatland_Spider
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Fri Feb 21, 2014 9:03 am

The correct way to install Windows is in one giant partition and one small system partition that the installer will create. Windows isn't flexible enough to take advantage of multiple partitions in a meaningful way.

dan99t wrote:

(1) How do I check for disk problems ? Should I check only OS partition or all partitions ? Can I do that while the OS is there & data on other partitions ?
(2) I am not a techy so I bought this Dell workstation which is about 1.5 years old & Under warranty so I can ask them to check for more complex problems. So what should I ask them to do ? Check motherboard, RAM or something else ?
(3) I do want to format this partition & clean install windows-7 again so should I delete that partition & install OS or should I delete it, format it, create a C: volume & install after that ? Installing directly on a deleted volume creates a small 100 MB system partition. What does it do & do I need that ? In past I did it the second method & it did not create that small 100 MB system partition.

Also do I need to make it active or primary before installing OS & if yes how do I do that ?


1) You can run chkdsk, and Dell diagnostics should be able to tell you.

2) Run the diagnostics before you call Dell. That will tell you if there is physical problems with your hardware that the tests can detect, and the Dell tech will ask you to run the diagnostics once you call if you haven't already. Try booting into a live Linux distro like Crunchbang or Ubuntu. That will tell you if the problem is with Windows of the hardware as well. If everything works fine in Linux, the problem is probably with Windows.

3) That small partition is the boot partition. It holds the bootloader and everything it needs to get the Windows kernel up and running.

The Windows 7 installer will create the partitions that it needs. Just delete everything and let the installer take care of things. It will take care of setting the partition active and all of that.
 
dan99t
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Sat Feb 22, 2014 4:41 am

Flatland_Spider wrote:
The correct way to install Windows is in one giant partition and one small system partition that the installer will create. Windows isn't flexible enough to take advantage of multiple partitions in a meaningful way.

dan99t wrote:

(1) How do I check for disk problems ? Should I check only OS partition or all partitions ? Can I do that while the OS is there & data on other partitions ?
(2) I am not a techy so I bought this Dell workstation which is about 1.5 years old & Under warranty so I can ask them to check for more complex problems. So what should I ask them to do ? Check motherboard, RAM or something else ?
(3) I do want to format this partition & clean install windows-7 again so should I delete that partition & install OS or should I delete it, format it, create a C: volume & install after that ? Installing directly on a deleted volume creates a small 100 MB system partition. What does it do & do I need that ? In past I did it the second method & it did not create that small 100 MB system partition.

Also do I need to make it active or primary before installing OS & if yes how do I do that ?


1) You can run chkdsk, and Dell diagnostics should be able to tell you.

2) Run the diagnostics before you call Dell. That will tell you if there is physical problems with your hardware that the tests can detect, and the Dell tech will ask you to run the diagnostics once you call if you haven't already. Try booting into a live Linux distro like Crunchbang or Ubuntu. That will tell you if the problem is with Windows of the hardware as well. If everything works fine in Linux, the problem is probably with Windows.

3) That small partition is the boot partition. It holds the bootloader and everything it needs to get the Windows kernel up and running.

The Windows 7 installer will create the partitions that it needs. Just delete everything and let the installer take care of things. It will take care of setting the partition active and all of that.


Ran the chkdsk & found no errors.

Do I still need to do further diagnostics ?

Thanks
 
Melvar
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Sat Feb 22, 2014 5:41 am

Are you still having issues that swapping the mouse didn't fix?
 
dan99t
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Sat Feb 22, 2014 8:39 am

Melvar wrote:
Are you still having issues that swapping the mouse didn't fix?


After swapping with the new one, the mouse issue is gone for now.
 
Melvar
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Sat Feb 22, 2014 4:11 pm

Yes, I was asking if you still have other issues that would make you think there might be a problem with the hard drive. If not, chkdsk says it's fine and you have no symptoms, so I doubt you really need to keep running diagnostics.
 
dan99t
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Sun Feb 23, 2014 1:58 am

Melvar wrote:
Yes, I was asking if you still have other issues that would make you think there might be a problem with the hard drive. If not, chkdsk says it's fine and you have no symptoms, so I doubt you really need to keep running diagnostics.


My major concern is that I have cloned this problematic HDD which has 4 more partitions with data, would also clone bad sectors if there were any to the new cloned drive ?

I am planning on using this brand new cloned HDD as my primary HDD, off of which I will be backing up data by cloning it once a week.

So my question is, would bad sectors if any in the original problematic HDD be transferred to cloned HDD ?

Thanks
 
Melvar
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Sun Feb 23, 2014 4:36 am

Copying data from a drive with bad sectors won't cause bad sectors on the new drive, but it could copy bad data. Realistically though, the files won't be any more corrupted than they already are, assuming there actually are any bad sectors.

The thing is, nothing you've said so far leads me to believe you've actually been having HDD problems (that's why I asked if swapping the mouse fixed everything). You could run the Dell diagnostics if you haven't accidentally removed them from the drive with your various formatting, cloning, & partitioning activities, but unless you are having some problem that you think may be caused by a failing hard drive, I wouldn't worry about it.
 
Flatland_Spider
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Sun Feb 23, 2014 5:20 pm

There will be some basic diagnostics built into the BIOS, and Dell has some online diagnostics. There should also be a way to download a diagnostics disk from the Dell website as well.
 
dan99t
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Re: What is the Proper Way to Partition & Install Win-7

Mon Feb 24, 2014 1:44 am

I have cloned the Original suspicious drive onto a brand new drive & now using it as a Master drive.

So this new drive still has the old OS on it. So would it be a good idea to Fresh Install OS on this new drive ?

Also for years I have been installing the OS in following way so please comment if it is the right way or not.

I delete the OS partition. Then I create a Volume on that partition. I format that volume. Then I install OS in that volume. Doing this way there is no small 100 MB system partition created.

But if I just delete the system partition & don't create a volume & don't format it, then installing OS on that partition creates a small 100 MB partition.

So which way is the right way ?

Thank You

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