zoltanthegypsy
Apologies for continuing the thread hijacking.  Maybe we could/should move this somewhere else.  It's good stuff.

<snip>
I did a fresh install of Win 7 in a box with 3 HDs already installed.  I did the main drive partitioning in advance and directed '7 to install into the 1st partition, just to avoid it creating a boot partition.  It happily did so, and didn't put its boot files anywhere else.  I'm reasonably sure of that, since I boot via grub on my 2nd partition and have control over what gets booted - and where.

When I did an install of '7 on my StinkPad it insisted on adding a boot partition, even though I tried to install into an existing partition.   It warned me that it was creating another partition.

My guess is it did what I wanted in the desktop case because all primary partitions were already assigned, but not in the laptop case because I had only assigned one partition in advance.

[edit] IIRC, I hadn't assigned all 4 primaries, but had assigned all the space.

What do you think?

Z.

I agree with not Hijacking this thread...  but your quick answers.
 
yes, you can avoid the "system" partition by pre-formatting the drives before Win7 installation, (not allowing the win7 installer to create the partitions), either by formatting using a WinXP or Vista Install disk, or using the Win7 install disk, and pressing Shift + F10 keys at the first setup screen (the one that allows selection of language). This will open a Command Prompt window.  You can then use the "Diskpart" command to preformat the HDD.
 
On your laptop, you can also "force" the windows installation to not create the system partition. (well, actually get rid of it)
 
During install, when windows tells you it is going to create an additional partition, allow it to.
Once you get back to the "Where do you want to install Windows" screen, select the Primary partition (not the 100mb "system" partition, usually partition #2- Your HDD capacity less the allocated "system" partition), and delete it.  You'll get warnings, but just click OK.  The partition you deleted will become "un-allocated".
Now, highlight the "system reserved" partition, and select "extend" and select all of the space available, and click apply.  You'll get another warning that what you are about to do cannot be undone.  Just click OK. 
Last thing...  Select the new system reserved extended partition, and click "Format"...  another warning, select OK.
Once formatting is complete, your entire HDD will show as a "normal" system partition.
Since there is now only 1 partition, hit the "next" button, and let Win7 install.

Pardon the bump, I just feel that this thread should be linked to it's continuations here:

USB lockups, SATA failures, and random lockups (may be related)

and my OC quest thread:

HalloweenWeed's OC: It's stable at 4.0GHz now don't know why

in case anyone is doing some troubleshooting research in the future.

uplandgunner

Just reading all of this for the first time. Weed, When you kept describing the port as failing...

[...]

I believe your problem has to do with IMSM and going to IRST and RAID edition HDD's supporting TLER. Hopefully others will see this and get advice.

So TTT this thread goes again

^ +1 ^ ^ ^
Hindsight is always 20/20.

HalloweenWeed, do you also mean that the setting the ICH VCore to 1.15 does not help - that it was the PSU alone that was the issue?
 
Thanks,
 
Kindari