How can I re-install / re-activate the 'System Reserved' partition?

Question

How can I re-install / re-activate the 'System Reserved' partition?

NB: I'm currently using W10 OS, that is on its own, on a 500GB SSD

My PC has one SSD, and several HDD's, which each have several 'Virtual Drives'
My PC has evolved overtime, so some have different OS on them.
These all had the partition type of: Primary Partition,
Including the 'System Reserved' partition.

Awhile back I needed to make some space by merging two Virtual Drives together.
These two VD's were on the HDD that also had the 'System Reserved' partition on it.
The 'System Reserved' partition, was the first VD, and the VD's I needed to merge were the last two VD's
But when I merged them, I got a message that didn’t make sense to me at the time.
But I continued anyway, but then I noticed that all the VD partitions, on that HDD, are now shown as 'Simple Volume' partitions, instead of 'Primary Partitions'

Then later, when I needed to access the BIOS, it wouldn't let me !
So I assume this is because I have effectively disabled the 'System Reserved' partition, by changing that partition from a 'Primary Partition' to a 'Simple Volume' partition?

If this is the case, then how can I rectify this?

NB: Currently, I only need to run this PC via the W10 OS, that is on its own, on a 500GB SSD

I may retain the other OS, so that I can use them occasionally.
Or I may remove all of the other OS, and if I need to use other OS, I will do this via a virtual machine.

Thanks

Answer 1

Hello

“when I needed to access the BIOS, it wouldn't let me”

What did this symptom look like? Usually the biso is seprate from operating system. We can get into bios even we didn't have any operating system.

If I understood the issue correctly, we want to fix the boot partition of the Windows system. If I misunderstood, please feel freel to let me know that. We could try the following steps:

1. Boot into WinRE mode. Press shift then reboot or just boot with an installation media, choose "install" then choose "Repair your computer". Once boot into WinRE, then choose "troubleshoot", "Advanced options", choose the "command prompt".
2. Then input "diskpart"

"list volume"

You will get the drive letter of all the volumes. Recognize the system drive letter based on the partition size. Or you could type "notepad" then try to open something from "File“ option”. You will get all the drive letter UI just like an explorer UI.

3. Type "exit" to exit the diskpart command UI.
4. Type "bootrec /scanos", it will scan all the drives for any possible windows installation drive. If you got one, you can type "bcdboot C:\Windows" (suppose the C: is the windows drive).

If it won't return any result, you can try to type "bcdboot C:\windows" directly then check if it can create the boot partition correctly (the C: is based on the result of step 2)

Hope my suggestions will be helpful!