Move, repartition and making the whole thing work! Why won't the machine boot?

[|_aban]

Now, I'm very frustrated here, and would apreciate all help that I can get!

I have three harddrives available here:

1. 150Gb, came with a Samsung laptop, with Windows 7 starter edition installed (some Samsung customized edition).
Have 4 Primary partitions installed:
1 RECOVERY partition (Hidden NTFS)
1 partition called "SYSTEM" which has the boot flag (NTFS), very small one
1 partition with Windows 7 installed, C: (NTFS)
1 partition intended for My Documents, etc, D: (NTFS)
Only the 2 last partitions will be visible from within Windows.

2. 30Gb, with Kubuntu 11.10 installed
1 small partition for /boot (ext4)
1 partition for / (ext4)
1 partition for /home (ext4)
1 swap partition (swap), 2Gb

3. 120Gb Empty disk to be customized.

Windows 7 came with the laptop, so I don't have any installation CD. My laptop does not have room for more than 1 hard disk, but I want to have both Windows and Kubuntu installed dual-bootable. I also have a desktop computer, which I intend to use for copying files, partitions and everything else between the disks.

My idea is to transfer all partitions from disk 1 , to disk 3, making it boot Windows as normal, but since disk 3 is a little smaller, I have to resize the partitions along the way. Physically, it shouldn't be any problem, because there is sufficient empty space on the partitions. So I have run "defrag" from Windows before doing anything else, to make sure all data is stored at the beginning of all partitions. Very well. Then the idea is to copy/install Kubuntu to disk 3 as well, and make the disk dual-bootable.

I moved all disks to the desktop computer. Before doing anything else I used "dd" to make a raw backup of the entire disk 1 to a file on a 4th disk, just in case I should screw up anything. Then I startet "partitionmanager" from Kubuntu, copy-pasted the partitions one-by-one, and then resized them before copying over the next one. Before copying the last partition, I had to make an extended partition to put it inside, so that I should be able to make more partitions for Kubuntu later. Then, I created partitions for Kubuntu, just in case Windows should do anything funny with any available disk space left.

Finally, I used "dd" to copy the master boot record, and all blocks from number 0 to number 62 from disk 1 to disk 3, as I guess that should make the disk bootable. The plan was to make sure that Windows would boot normally, and backup again before doing anything more. By now the s#¤ has really hit the fan.

The MBR seems to work, but I get the Windows "failure" screen at boot-time, which says that Windows is unable to boot, probably due to a recent hardware change. What's wrong?

I have searched around the internet, to try and find a solution:

1. Tried using a program called "ms-sys", but that made no change.
2. Tried to copy over Kubuntu as well, boot with a recovery USB-disk and try to re-configure GRUB2, that sc#¤@£* up Kubuntu as well, and I had to format the partitions in question, and re-copy the mbr etc. from disk 1 again.

Why will not Windows 7 boot up? It seems that it can't find the partitions, or that the local boot sectors within the partition(s) is corrupted.

I won't do anything more to that disk now, until I get Windows 7 booted up. Any help would be appreciated.

[r.stiltskin]

The MBR that you copied from disk1 to disk3 is no good since you've resized and moved the partitions on disk3. The MBR is presumably looking for the partitions at the locations where they used to be. Also, the Windows 7 "system" loader (or whatever they call it) is looking for Drive C where it used to be. Besides that, I wouldn't rely on any Linux partition manager to resize and move Windows partitions, especially Windows 7. I'd stick with Windows tools for that.

I think you have to start over from the beginning, but this method should be much quicker and easier than what you tried. You didn't mention whether you have Windows 7 available on the desktop. If you do, great. If you have an older Windows, maybe OK but I'm not sure. If only Linux, then you'll have to put disk1 back into the laptop and clone it from there.

Assuming you have Windows 7 on the desktop:
download and install Macrium Reflect Free http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx and use that to clone the entire disk1 onto disk3.

If you don't have Windows 7 on the desktop, put disk1 back into the laptop, install Macrium Reflect on it. Then, if the laptop can connect with the desktop over your local network, you should be able clone it to disk3 that way. Otherwise, put disk3 in a usb enclosure (preferably USB 3.0 if your laptop is compatible with that), connect it to the laptop and clone disk1 to disk3 over the usb connection.

Then remove disk1 & put it away, install disk3 in the laptop and again boot Windows 7. Next, download and install Partition Wizard (free edition) http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-...n-manager.html and use that to resize and move all the partitions as you wish, freeing up space on the first three and moving everything forward so the empty space will be behind partition 4. Finally, you can use Partition Wizard to change Partition 4 to an extended partition (easy, basically just one or two clicks will do that) and shrink the logical drive D, leaving as much space as you want for Linux as unallocated space behind D on the extended partition. Make sure Windows 7 still boots.

Now reboot with your Linux install disk and use its partitioner to set up your Linux logical partitions on the extended partition.

ps: I'm not speculating about this. I just completed this process (using a usb enclosure for the new disk) on a new HP laptop with a similar 4-primary-partion configuration. Everything worked correctly -- no problems.

[Teunis]

I've little experience with Win7 (and Vista) but do know there's always a chance of hard disk corruption so these computers come with a utility to make a back up DVD (or set of DVD's).
That's where I would start.

Then I feel the difference between the original 150GB and the spare 120GB disk is so small I wouldn't bother to change them out.
But when you do, first use the DVD's to reinstall Win7.
Because Win7 is peculiar in detecting changes in the HW configuration I would use the build-in disk resizer of Win7 to make up free space in partition 4 (the D: drive)
It can be done with a Linux partitioner like on a live CD but there's more chance Win7 will not accept it.

Every time I resized a Win7/ Vista disk Windows would only start up in recovery mode and do some 'repairs' before it was again fully 'usable'.

Only now should you continue with the installation of Linux, including the further partitioning of the free disk space.