Please see this attachment -> So for the last 2 days i've been messing around with partitions, expanding and shrinking. I installed Windows 8(C and tried to install linux+swap partition but failed because HDDs apparently have a 4 primary partition limit. So I took a look at the partitions and there was that nasty System Reserved that Windows 7(F creates. I wanted to delete it so I went looking around the web to find out a way to delete it whilst still being able to dual boot with Windows 8 (using bcdboot command, setting partition active, using Visual BCD to repair dual-boot, etc. <- I did all of this in Windows 7 partition). Well I managed to do it, more or less, but after fiddling around some more to get (F:\) to say nothing but "Primary Partition" (now booted back to 8) I wasn't very lucky and Windows 7 no longer boots nor shows up for dual boot and goes straight to 8 but this doesn't matter! What I want to do right now, since i've already moved all my files to the Windows 8 partition, is: 1 - Completely delete and eliminate Windows 7(F 2 - Move C: to the beginning of the disk 3 - Have the rest of the disc as unallocated free space so I can do whatever I want with it Now i'm just scared what might happen if I delete F: In Partition Magic it says it has boot, so I assume if I delete F: then Windows 8(C won't boot? And another thing that's making me nervous is the fact that Windows' Disk Management doesn't detect the unallocated spaces that Partition Magic does. So what can I do? I already have Windows 8 on a USB stick to repair in case anything bad happens. I hope you understand the mess I did. Also pardon me if I posted in the wrong forum.
What I do is a fresh install win7 and save the image to Acronis then wipe the HD ,then a fresh install of win8 save image to Acronis. Then I use easeus partition manager or any good part s/w to create three patitions as follows 1st partition 600mb(C) ,then I normaly spilt the rest of the HD 50/50 (D,E) then I put C: and D: from the Acronis win 7 image to C:.D: and the Win 8 image to E: reboot use easyBCD and set the win 8 dual boot,job done
Another point it really helps if you actually name your partitions i,e, windows7 ,windows8 e.c.t without partition names you can get mixed up especially when using partitioning software.
Grealy appreciate the help guys and I managed to fix it As I thought, deleting F: would cause C: not to boot. But i cared not! Unfortunately this caused the NTFS partition to have some sort of "bitmap" error but I easily fixed it by running chkdsk /f. Trying to fix boot through recovery was not working as bootrec /scanos wouldn't even find an operating system... So what I did was boot a live cd of mint and use gparted to bring the whole partition back to the very begining of the disk. Finaly bootrec /scanos found the OS so i ran bootrec /rebuildbcd and bootrec /fixboot and here I am again