{"id":2368,"date":"2011-03-08T21:45:22","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T21:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2368"},"modified":"2011-03-08T21:45:22","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T21:45:22","slug":"rambling-thoughts-windows-7-service-pack-1-full-drive-encryption-mounting-virtual-hard-disks-and-a-pc-rebuild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/03\/rambling-thoughts-windows-7-service-pack-1-full-drive-encryption-mounting-virtual-hard-disks-and-a-pc-rebuild.htm","title":{"rendered":"Rambling thoughts: Windows 7 service pack 1, full drive encryption, mounting virtual hard disks, and a PC rebuild"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every now and again, a whole heap of stuff &#8220;happens&#8221; to me that I think would make a good blog post, if only I had the time to do a little more research and pull it all together. This time, I haven&#8217;t done the extra research and I don&#8217;t have an answer, but I&#8217;ll publish my thoughts anyway. Maybe, someone else can fill in the gaps, if they think it might help.<\/p>\n<p>It all started out in 2009, when one of my colleagues left the company and I inherited his (slightly newer than mine) notebook PC, complete with a 250GB hard disk (I was pushing the limits of my 120GB disk at the time). Transferring my data was easy &#8211; I just used Symantec Ghost (or something similar) to image my 120GB drive onto the 250GB disk, but someone had created the original system with the Windows 7 system reserved partition at the end of the disk, leaving me with the following layout:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>C: System<\/li>\n<li>D: Data<\/li>\n<li>System Reserved<\/li>\n<li>Free Space<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I could probably have moved the reserved partition and expanded D: but, in the interests of time, I created a new partition (E: Extra) and used that instead.<\/p>\n<p>Fast-forward a couple of years and I wanted to install Windows 7 service pack 1 on my machine. Unfortunately the installer needed 8GB of free space on C: and I only had 7GB, even after housekeeping. My intention was to shrink D:, move it, expand C:, and maybe even move the reserved partition, merging D: and E: to come up with a sensible layout.<\/p>\n<p>There was just one problem &#8211; in the meantime my organisation had started to use a full disc encryption product (not Microsoft BitLocker, because deployment commenced whilst most of the organisation was still on Windows XP), so I couldn&#8217;t use third-party disk partition editors (like GPartEd) as booting from a Live CD left the disk locked.<\/p>\n<p>One possible answer lay in a complete system image, which, helpfully, creates some virtual hard disks for my multitude of drives. Then, I thought, I could mount the VHD copy of D:, remove the letter from the physical drive D: and reboot, to use the virtual disk instead (before removing the original D: and expanding C:). Still with me? Even if you&#8217;re not, it didn&#8217;t work&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It seems there are two problems with mounting VHDs:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They don&#8217;t persist at startup (and the solutions on the web involve scripts that run on startup\/login &#8211; too late for loading user profiles, etc.).<\/li>\n<li>Loading a VHD which contains an exact copy of the original system creates problems. And those problems do persist after a reboot, leaving me with a system that will not load any user profiles. Oops. (Garry Martin highlighted this from <a href=\"http:\/\/technet.microsoft.com\/en-us\/sysinternals\/ee656415\">an article about SysInternals Disk2VHD that highlights problems with disk signatures and the boot configuration database<\/a>, but it seemed I was experiencing a similar issue with a non-boot volume too.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;No worries&#8221;, I thought, I&#8217;ll reassign drive letter D: from the virtual hard disk, back to the original physical partition. That worked, but I still couldn&#8217;t load any user profiles &#8211; only the administrator could log on, and they were given a new profile based on system defaults. Oh dear.<\/p>\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t find any obvious advice on viewing\/restoring whatever identifiers Windows was looking for in order to find the correct partition for my domain user account, so I decided to restore the partition from backup. Except that the full disc encryption software seemed to prevent it, not just when booted from a recovery disc or from a boot time selection to repair my computer, but also when attempting the restore from within Windows Backup.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, the simplest solution was to have my machine rebuilt onto the latest corporate build, and then to restore my data by mounting the VHDs in my backup set (which are no longer identical to my physical disk partitions and so do not cause problems). Perhaps it really is time for me to stop being a geek, and to concentrate on using my PC as a business tool&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every now and again, a whole heap of stuff &#8220;happens&#8221; to me that I think would make a good blog post, if only I had the time to do a little more research and pull it all together. This time, I haven&#8217;t done the extra research and I don&#8217;t have an answer, but I&#8217;ll publish &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/03\/rambling-thoughts-windows-7-service-pack-1-full-drive-encryption-mounting-virtual-hard-disks-and-a-pc-rebuild.htm\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Rambling thoughts: Windows 7 service pack 1, full drive encryption, mounting virtual hard disks, and a PC rebuild<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[144],"class_list":["post-2368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-windows-7"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Rambling thoughts: Windows 7 service pack 1, full drive encryption, mounting virtual hard disks, and a PC rebuild  - markwilson.it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/03\/rambling-thoughts-windows-7-service-pack-1-full-drive-encryption-mounting-virtual-hard-disks-and-a-pc-rebuild.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rambling thoughts: Windows 7 service pack 1, full drive encryption, mounting virtual hard disks, and a PC rebuild  - markwilson.it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Every now and again, a whole heap of stuff &#8220;happens&#8221; to me that I think would make a good blog post, if only I had the time to do a little more research and pull it all together. 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It only has 4GB of RAM and sometimes the boys leave their flash-based websites open when they switch users (which can be a resource hog), but it was more than that (4GB should have been enough really).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3462,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2012\/01\/hardware-lineup-for-2012.htm","url_meta":{"origin":2368,"position":1},"title":"Hardware lineup for 2012","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Friday 6 January 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Last year I wrote a post about my \"hardware lineup\" - i.e. the tech I use almost every day so I thought I should really do the same for 2012. \u00a0Much of it's still the same but there are some changes - it will be interesting to take a look\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Motoring&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Motoring","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/motoring"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/vw-tiguan-sport.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5112,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2014\/01\/hardware-lineup-for-2014.htm","url_meta":{"origin":2368,"position":2},"title":"Hardware lineup for 2014","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Tuesday 28 January 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"For the last few years, I've written a post about my \"hardware lineup\" - the tech I use pretty much every day (2011, 2012, and 2013). This year, Dan Delaney reminded me when he borrowed the idea (and I originally stole it from someone else...) so here's the belated 2014\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Motoring&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Motoring","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/motoring"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/vw-tiguan-sport.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4694,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/01\/hardware-lineup-for-2013.htm","url_meta":{"origin":2368,"position":3},"title":"Hardware lineup for 2013","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 7 January 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"For the last couple of years, I've written a post about my \"hardware lineup\" - the tech I use pretty much every day (2011, 2012)\u00a0and I thought I'd continue the theme as we enter 2013. In these times of austerity, there's not a lot of scope for new geek toys\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Motoring&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Motoring","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/motoring"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/vw-tiguan-sport.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2276,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/01\/hardware-lineup-for-2011.htm","url_meta":{"origin":2368,"position":4},"title":"Hardware lineup for 2011","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Tuesday 11 January 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a bit of a copycat post really but I saw Mike Taulty and Phil Winstanley's hardware lineups and thought it was a good idea. So, here it is, a summary of the technology I use pretty much every day and how I see that changing this year. Car:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Motoring&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Motoring","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/motoring"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":480,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2005\/05\/why-consultants-should-leave-hardware.htm","url_meta":{"origin":2368,"position":5},"title":"Why consultants should leave hardware alone&#8230;","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Thursday 19 May 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Today has not been a good day for me and computer hardware. It all started a couple of weeks back, when I dropped the bag in which I carry the Dell Latitude D600 that I use for work. When I took the computer out of the bag, I had cracked\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Waffle and randomness&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Waffle and randomness","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/inane-waffle"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2369,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2368\/revisions\/2369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}