mbr

Infopackets Reader Calli P. writes: " Dear Dennis, We own a heating and cooling business and have a server that uses a Windows 10 virtual machine on VMware workstation. The virtual machine runs a program called ESC Connections Server that allows us ... to book appointments (among other things) from our workstations and also remotely on our phones. The ESC Server and virtual machine are both mission critical. That said, I understand that Windows 10 will only be supported until October, 2025 and would like to upgrade it to Windows 11. The problem is that our virtual machine was built using the MBR ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sarah H. writes: " Dear Dennis, A few days ago, my PC got stuck updating Windows 10 (for over 30 minutes), so I pulled the power cord out. After that, Windows wouldn't boot to the desktop. It would give me blue screen of death ... (BSOD), then reboot, then BSOD, ad infinitum. I knew it was stuck in a reboot loop, so I decided to install Windows 10 again. During the Windows 10 setup, it asks me to select where to install Windows. I selected the C drive, but I get an error message that says: ' Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Gros C. writes: " Dear Dennis, By mistake I installed both Windows 10 64 bit and Windows 32 bit on my machine. Both installations reside on separate partitions. I want to keep the Windows 10 64 bit, but the problem is that I don't ... know how to safely remove the Windows 10 32 bit from my machine. Can you give me a bit of advice on how to remote Windows 10 32 bit? " My response: This can be very, very tricky, as how to remove Windows 10 32 bit (or even the 64 bit version) on a separate partition depends on which installation of Windows contains the master boot record. For ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam T. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have an HP computer, which has 4 hard drive partitions: the System partition, the C drive, the factory image partition (which includes a backup of Windows), and the 'HP Tools' partition, which ... contains BIOS information in case a BIOS flash fails and I need to restore my BIOS. My question is this: I used MiniTool Partition Wizard to shrink my C drive, which then created unallocated space. Normally I can right click the unallocated space and create a new volume, however, I receive an error message that says: 'Partition Wizard cannot create a ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Steve H. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a RAID 1 set up with 4 hard drives in a mirrored array. Recently my RAID software reported that one of the drives was dropped from the array and has since been marked as 'rebuilding', ... however, during the rebuild process I keep receiving RAID controller errors that data could not be synced / written to the drive. I'm not sure what to do from here. Is there any way for me to independently check the drive for errors? I understand that if the drive is bad I should replace it, but I'm not even sure which drive is which. " My response: This ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Phil P. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have installed Windows 10 32 bit and now I am trying to upgrade to Windows 10 64 bit using the clean install method. Since I'm installing Windows 10 from scratch, I am also going to upgrade my C ... drive performance using 2 x 2TB hard drives (for a total of 4 TB usable data) in RAID 0 configuration . The problem is that when I try to install Windows onto my RAID, it tells me that 'Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer' ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Sprenger' writes: " Dear Dennis, I have four hard drives in my PC and four different operating systems. My main hard drive has Windows XP, then my second drive has Vista Ultimate, the third has Windows 7 Ultimate, and the fourth ... has Windows 8.1. I want to get rid of the Windows XP drive, but if I disconnect it, none of my other hard drives will boot. What should I do? I prefer to have Windows 7 as the default operating system. I want to avoid formatting all my hard drives just to get them working again. Any suggestions? " My Response: It sounds like your Windows XP drive ... (view more)