Partitions show up 2 times

J

Jim10

Member
Hello to everybody from a new member.

Situation is as follows:
First partition on my harddisk is a Primary, Boot. That is where Vista and Easy BCD are installed.

After that follows an extended partition containing 10 logical partitions for all the other stuff.

When I want to add an entry in EBCD all partitions except the first primary and the first logical one show up double.

Looks like this:

EBCD.jpg


Not a big problem, I can still find the right one, but it looks a little strange and I wonder if this is "normal" behaviour or if it's just happening on my machine.

And if so, what could be the problem and how to solve?

Gr,
Jim
 
Hi Jim, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies.

Nope, that most certainly isn't intended behavior! I haven't seen that before, can you please do two things:

EasyBCD | Useful Utilities | Power Console
Code: 
bootpart.exe
Can you copy and paste the output of that command here in a
Code: 
 tag?
 
Also, a screenshot of "Disk Management" from Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Managmenet would be very helpful.
 
Thanks a bunch, Jim.
 
Hello GURU!, thanks for the quick reply

And of course I can, even with pleasure:

Code: 
Microsoft Windows [versie 6.0.6000]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. Alle rechten voorbehouden.

C:\Windows\system32>cd \program files\neosmart technologies\easybcd\bin

C:\Program Files\NeoSmart Technologies\EasyBCD\bin>bootpart.exe
Boot Partition 2.60 for WinNT/2K/XP (c)1995-2005 G. Vollant (info@winimage.com)
WEB : http://www.winimage.com and http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm
Add partition in the Windows NT/2000/XP Multi-boot loader
Run "bootpart.exe /?" for more information

Physical number of disk 0 : c65c725b
 0 : C:* type=7  (HPFS/NTFS), size= 52069702 KB, Lba Pos=63
 1 : C:  type=f  (Win95 XInt 13 extended), size= 363510787 KB, Lba Pos=104149395
 2 : C:  type=7   (HPFS/NTFS), size= 30716248 KB, Lba Pos=104149458
 3 : C:  type=5   (Extended), size= 10241437 KB, Lba Pos=165581955
 4 : C:  type=7    (HPFS/NTFS), size= 10241406 KB, Lba Pos=165582018
 5 : C:  type=5    (Extended), size= 61440592 KB, Lba Pos=186064830
 6 : C:  type=b     (Win95 Fat32), size= 61440561 KB, Lba Pos=186064893
 7 : C:  type=5     (Extended), size= 153597465 KB, Lba Pos=308946015
 8 : C:  type=7      (HPFS/NTFS), size= 153597433 KB, Lba Pos=308946078
 9 : C:  type=5      (Extended), size= 51199155 KB, Lba Pos=616140945
10 : C:  type=83       (Linux native), size= 51199123 KB, Lba Pos=616141008
11 : C:  type=5       (Extended), size= 10241437 KB, Lba Pos=718539255
12 : C:  type=82        (Linux swap), size= 10241406 KB, Lba Pos=718539318
13 : C:  type=5        (Extended), size= 15358140 KB, Lba Pos=739022130
14 : C:  type=83         (Linux native), size= 15358108 KB, Lba Pos=739022193
15 : C:  type=5         (Extended), size= 15358140 KB, Lba Pos=769738410
16 : C:  type=83          (Linux native), size= 15358108 KB, Lba Pos=769738473
17 : C:  type=5          (Extended), size= 15358140 KB, Lba Pos=800454690
18 : C:  type=83           (Linux native), size= 15358108 KB, Lba Pos=800454753
Physical number of disk 1 : ee2d2
19 : D:  type=5  (Extended), size= 312568641 KB, Lba Pos=63
20 : D:  type=7   (HPFS/NTFS), size= 312568609 KB, Lba Pos=126

C:\Program Files\NeoSmart Technologies\EasyBCD\bin>
Seems very much the same output.
Which means my partitiontable is messed up? Could be but the screens of Windows Diskmanagement and Linux GParted look both quite normal to me.

Tonight I will make the screenshots for You.

I'm curious!

Gr,
Jim

Addendum:

Well, as promised the screenshots. My computer speaks Dutch but that 'll not be a problem I guess.
And Yes, "Houston we have a problem" seems to me.

Diskmanagement in Vista:

Dskmgmt1.jpg


And that looks a little bit strange! All non Windows (linux ext3 and swap) partitions are marked as "Primary". And exactly that seems to be the problem in EasyBCD. And it's also impossible because that would mean SIX primary partitions instead of the maximal four.

To make things a bit more confusing is this a screenshot of Diskmanagement in XP:

Dskmgmt2.jpg


and silly enough there things look quite normal.
("In orde" = "Healthy", "Onbekende partitie" = "Unknown partition")

To be sure also a screenshot of GParted in Debian linux:

GParted.jpg


which also seems reasonable normal to me looking at the given /dev/sda.... numbers


Well, things are getting stranger and stranger :x.

Gr,
Jim
 
Last edited:
Wow, talk about "ask and ye shall be told!"

Thanks for all that info - sounds like a definite problem with your partition table to me :x

This is quite a sticky situation you're in.... When people have a problem with the partition table, we generally recommend deleting the MBR and using an MBR recovery wizard to re-create it without losing any data, but in this case I'm genuinely concerned it'll recreate the bad data too....

What about the total disk size? Do the sum of the partitions == the total size? or bigger?
 
sounds like a definite problem with your partition table to me :x (.....) This is quite a sticky situation you're in (.....) When people have a problem with the partition table......
Click to expand...
Well, in practice that "sticky situation" is not too bad (lucky me :smile:).

And given the fact that XP neither Debian report any strange partitionproblem it could as far as I'm concerned easily be a Vista bug or so.

Everything works like it should do, no problems with starting either Vista, XP or Ubuntu Feisty.

Also adding/removing entries in the Vista bootmanager with EBCD works flawless postulated you choose the right partition from that "weird" list but because I created that partitiontable myself (with a GParted Live-CD) and therefore know what is where on the disk that's no problem.

So for the time being I am going to leave everything just like it is. The bad thing is that I can't stand not knowing what's going on inside my machine, and that was the reason for my initial posting.

I keep up hoping for a "brilliant" moment of someone and in the mean time I will mess around a little bit with tools like testdisk and so trying to find the solution myself.

Thank You for your interest so far and greetings,

Jim
 
I don't think there is anything you can do about it, and as for why it happened one can only guess.

If it's working, I guess there is no need to break it :smile:
 
I don't think there is anything you can do about it
Click to expand...
Oh yes, I can! Wipe the entire disk removing all partitions and start all over again :wink:.

But for the time being I am not going to. At this very moment a "Testdisk" analyze is running and till now (at about 50%) nothing strange showed up.

And I did some thinking about how and what.

Last week I have changed the partitioning of the disk. I made images of all partitions with Acronis TrueImage, wiped out all partitions except the first primary where Vista resides, repartitioned the rest of the disk with GParted and put back the respective images.

And a close look to the logfiles of TrueImage learns that putting back an image, say to partition 7 for example, TI first deletes that partition, recreates it again and then puts the data back.

And I have a slight suspicion that this behaviour could be the cause.

I 'll try to find out and will keep you informed.

Gr,
Jim
 
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