How to prevent Windows from creating additional partitions during installation?

ceo54 · Jan 28, 2025

hsehestedt said:
In order to modify / add / omit any partitions, there is absolutely no need to modify the boot.wim. However, if you do still want to know how to do so, I can provide a step-by-step set of instructions to you. No third-party tools are needed. If you do want to know how to do this, just let me know. It will take me a little while to write a procedure, but I'd be happy to do so.

Just for my understanding, may I ask why it is that you want to do this? I'm curious because in normal usage, the other partitions needed by Windows are hidden from you - they get no drive letter assigned. As a result, in normal operation you will not even notice that they exist.

Finally, a couple of things to be aware of:

The EFI partition is required on a UEFI based system, so that partition will always be there.

The MSR (Microsoft Reserved Partition) can be eliminated, but there is a potential for the lack of that partition to cause problems for some third-party programs. EVERY GPT disk gets an MSR, not just the OS drive. For example, the system that I am working with right now has 5 drives so I have 5 MSR partitions. Having difficulties without the MSR is rare, but it can happen so I really suggest having an MSR partition. If you need more info on why this is, let me know. It is tiny and you will never see it (even Disk Management does not show this partition). As for the Recovery partition, you can omit this partition if you wish.

Again, all of this is trivially easy to resolve, but I would like a better understanding of why you wish to omit these partitions so that I can make more informed suggestions.

I can't stress how much I appreciate your response and the will to spend time to help me out. A simple thank you doesn't suffice, I wish you all the happiness in the world.

Actually, it's not just about being able to partitioning the drive, I also want to run some other 3rd party apps from a PE environment including but not limited to being able to deploy the Windows with some 3rd party program like WinNTSetup or Dism++, I believe WinPE is the best way to do it. It will also serve as a recovery solution with AOMEI running on it to create the snapshots of the system partition.

As for the reasoning behind the desire, I don't want a plethora of partitions scattered around the disk. Makes management, data storage and retrieval and recovery tasks extremely complicated. It's also about being organized. I'm a buff for it, everything in my life is highly organized to the best of my abilities.

So there's no other way to bypass the creation of an EFI partition? I'm not sure but I think Asus notebooks have the NTFS support from their firmware. I don't know about Dell or HP, that I have. But if it isn't this is so stupid and irresponsible. Why would the OEM's would do that ? I will, later investigate if there's any way to integrate the drivers in firmwares.

MSR partition is really not needed. Does Windows recovery create that partition? How would I determine where is it or how to manage it if it's not shown in Disk Management? I have solid recovery options at hand and I really don't want Windows recovery environment which has failed me more than once in the past so I don't trust it anymore.

ceo54 · Jan 28, 2025

dacrone said:
Dell has a whole system image on the recovery partition, so I assume when he sent it in they recreated that garbage. Most likely from the Dell Recovery Assistant or whatever it’s called. You can actually delete that. Only thing it will inhibit is resetting your Dell to factory image.

My Dell has over 150 GB used without installing any programs on it with as much as 6 or 7 Dell softwares installed and running. I still haven't started using it but I'm gonna diskpart it as the first step towards deployment. This is severe abuse of resources without my consent and I'm not going to tolerate it.

antspants · Jan 28, 2025

Berton said:
It contains the factory-restore files.

That makes sense then

ceo54 · Jan 28, 2025

I swear to God I can get Windows + Drivers + softwares all under 100 GB, maybe less, including some mammoth sized programs like DAW and Photoshop. For the rest of 350 GB, I will use it keep it for virtual machines and wouldn't allow Dell to use 1 MB of it.

Berton · Jan 28, 2025

A couple suggestions I've given clients, one to avoid bloatware is to buy the parts and build their own machine as they desire and the other is to avoid Windows and go with a free version of Linux. Of course I also had to advise that some programs wouldn't be available for running on Linux but may be comparable versions available. And I have them read the Windows EULA which says we only get a License to use Windows.

hsehestedt · Jan 28, 2025

@ceo54,

Thanks for your kind words! I, and everyone else in this community, am only too glad to be able to help.

Take a look at the tutorial linked to below. This was originally for Win 10, but should work on 11 as well.

Brief summary: If you want to create a customized Windows installation, you can start installation of Windows and before it completes enter a special mode known as "Audit Mode". In audit mode, you customize Windows - change Windows settings, install Win32 apps, etc. When done you capture that image creating an install.wim. Finally, you replace the install.wim on your Windows installation media. Now, when you install Windows, you will get your customized Windows right out of the box.

NOTE: I may need to retest this on 24H2. There have been some changes that may cause some refinement to that procedure to be needed. If you are interested in this, let me know and I'll accelerate my plans to test this

. I need to do it anyway.

Next, as for injecting drivers into your Windows image, this is something I do frequently! You have a few options:

1) Manually inject the drivers.
2) I wrote a program to do this (WIM Tools). You can run that program and let it add the drivers.

Let me know which option(s) interest you (you can choose both if you want). I'll get you details after I get your response.

As I said, I do this all the time. In fact, overnight I reinstalled Windows from scratch on a laptop. My Windows image already had the drivers for that laptop so when Windows was done installing I didn't have to install a single driver.

As for the partitioning, an EFI partition is not optional on a UEFI based system with GPT disks. That is simply a necessary item. MSR and Recovery partitions can be ditched. But again, you will never ever see any of these partitions in normal usage unless you go looking for them so it should cause you zero inconvenience, but if you want to get rid of them that is up to you. In fact, for the MSR, you already noticed how unobtrusive this is since you could not even find it. To find it, use diskpart. Example:

NOTE: My Windows disk is disk 2, not disk 0.

Again, to demonstrate how unobtrusive other partitions are, here is a system (a VM in this case) with all 4 of those partititions. Note that in your normal tools like File Explorer, there is no hint of anything except for C: (the Windows partition):

Create media for automated unattended install of Windows 10

How to create install media for completely automated unattended install of Windows 10

www.tenforums.com

You are interested in the WIM Tools project at the below link. Since I wrote this, I can help with usage

.

hsehestedt - Overview

hsehestedt has 6 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

github.com

Screenshot:

If I didn't answer anything to your satisfaction, do let me know.

Looking forward to helping further!

Edwin · Jan 28, 2025

I just did a bare metal clean install the other day, wiped Disk 0 completely...

Windows only created 2 small MB partitions...

hsehestedt · Jan 28, 2025

Edwin said:
I just did a bare metal clean install the other day, wiped Disk 0 completely...

View attachment 123543

Windows only created 2 small MB partitions...

View attachment 123544

You need to use Diskpart to see the MSR partition. Disk Management does not show that partition.

Edwin · Jan 28, 2025

hsehestedt said:
You need to use Diskpart to see the MSR partition.

Ah! Yes..., 16MB Reserved.

Marcus Vinicus · Jan 28, 2025

hsehestedt said:
You need to use Diskpart to see the MSR partition. Disk Management does not show that partition.

Partition management software also shows the MSR partition.

hsehestedt · Jan 28, 2025

Marcus Vinicus said:
Partition management software also shows the MSR partition.

Your post makes me wonder...

Could one not simply install Windows normally and then use a partitioning program to remove the unwanted partitions and then resize and move the Windows partition? Have not tried it, but that might be an easier solution for some persons.

Marcus Vinicus · Jan 28, 2025

Good point @hsehestedt, when I get a chance today, I'll have a read of Aomei's documentation on this.

The MS take on these UEFI/GPT partitions is here.

UEFI/GPT-based hard drive partitions

learn.microsoft.com

hsehestedt · Jan 28, 2025

Just did a quick test using Win 11 24H2.

NOTE: My testing was with the new setup, not the old setup.

In my testing, Windows would refuse to install unless both an EFI and MSR partition were present. It did not care about having no Recovery partition.

This was a manual installation, I had not tried an unattended installation, but I suspect that the same would apply there.

Marcus Vinicus · Jan 28, 2025

Following on the helpful comments in post #18 by @hsehestedt MS state in their documentation that all GPT drives must have a MSR partition regardless of whether or not it is the system drive. MS also say that to be careful and advise caution when changing and creating MSR partitions. AOMEI in their documentation for their Partition Manager give similar advice.

create partition msr

Reference article for create partition msr, which creates a Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition on a GUID partition table (gpt) disk.

learn.microsoft.com

Can I Delete MSR Reserved Partition When Installing Windows 10?

Can I delete MSR reserved partition when installing Windows 10? Here, you’ll know what the MSR reserved partition is and whether you should delete it.

www.diskpart.com

ceo54 · Thursday at 9:08 AM

hsehestedt said:
@ceo54,

Thanks for your kind words! I, and everyone else in this community, am only too glad to be able to help.

Take a look at the tutorial linked to below. This was originally for Win 10, but should work on 11 as well.

Brief summary: If you want to create a customized Windows installation, you can start installation of Windows and before it completes enter a special mode known as "Audit Mode". In audit mode, you customize Windows - change Windows settings, install Win32 apps, etc. When done you capture that image creating an install.wim. Finally, you replace the install.wim on your Windows installation media. Now, when you install Windows, you will get your customized Windows right out of the box.

NOTE: I may need to retest this on 24H2. There have been some changes that may cause some refinement to that procedure to be needed. If you are interested in this, let me know and I'll accelerate my plans to test this . I need to do it anyway.

Next, as for injecting drivers into your Windows image, this is something I do frequently! You have a few options:

1) Manually inject the drivers.
2) I wrote a program to do this (WIM Tools). You can run that program and let it add the drivers.

Let me know which option(s) interest you (you can choose both if you want). I'll get you details after I get your response.

As I said, I do this all the time. In fact, overnight I reinstalled Windows from scratch on a laptop. My Windows image already had the drivers for that laptop so when Windows was done installing I didn't have to install a single driver.

As for the partitioning, an EFI partition is not optional on a UEFI based system with GPT disks. That is simply a necessary item. MSR and Recovery partitions can be ditched. But again, you will never ever see any of these partitions in normal usage unless you go looking for them so it should cause you zero inconvenience, but if you want to get rid of them that is up to you. In fact, for the MSR, you already noticed how unobtrusive this is since you could not even find it. To find it, use diskpart. Example:

NOTE: My Windows disk is disk 2, not disk 0.

View attachment 123537

Again, to demonstrate how unobtrusive other partitions are, here is a system (a VM in this case) with all 4 of those partititions. Note that in your normal tools like File Explorer, there is no hint of anything except for C: (the Windows partition):

View attachment 123538

Create media for automated unattended install of Windows 10

How to create install media for completely automated unattended install of Windows 10

www.tenforums.com

You are interested in the WIM Tools project at the below link. Since I wrote this, I can help with usage .

hsehestedt - Overview

hsehestedt has 6 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

github.com

Screenshot:

View attachment 123541

If I didn't answer anything to your satisfaction, do let me know.

Looking forward to helping further!

Thank you for the response kind sir. I would gladly use your tool to inject drivers into boot.wim, because there's a remark in the UEFI, that it won't boot an OS's without the said driver.

So I have two questions now. First, does this Intel RST driver also needs to be injected into Install.wim along with Boot.wim ?
Second, is it possible to use the MBR instead of GPT on a pure UEFI based system for the system disk ?

SIW2 · Thursday at 9:27 AM

ceo54 said:
Thank you for the response, Mr. pseymour. As I understand it, the project you linked to enables booting the NTFS formatted USB drives in pure UEFI mode. Is there any way to make it boot the internal system drive without having to rely on an additional FAT32 partition?

Some bios do search ntfs partitions for the .efi file. Mine does. It is possible to boot windows that way. It appears ok at first but there are issues. For example bcdedit cannot find the bcd store presumably because it is looking for the esp partition type.

SIW2 · Thursday at 9:37 AM

hsehestedt said:
Just did a quick test using Win 11 24H2.

NOTE: My testing was with the new setup, not the old setup.

In my testing, Windows would refuse to install unless both an EFI and MSR partition were present. It did not care about having no Recovery partition.

That is awkward for people who have used mbr2gpt. If I recall correctly that does not create msr. Maybe that is why the more sensible setup is also there.

hsehestedt · Thursday at 10:01 AM

SIW2 said:
That is awkward for people who have used mbr2gpt. If I recall correctly that does not create msr. Maybe that is why the more sensible setup is also there.

I believe that you can get Windows installed without an MSR partition (should be lots of ways to do that), it's simply that the new setup didn't like it. I really didn't have much desire to take it further and try the old setup or any other "tricks" because I'm failing to see any logical or reasonable reason for not wanting the MSR. I have a tendency to give up easily on issues that appear to be pointless to me

If anyone at all can make a cogent argument for why one would want to do this, then I might regain interest.

SIW2 · Thursday at 10:11 AM

I'm failing to see any logical or reasonable reason for not wanting the MSR

It is not usually because they want to do it. It is done by mbr2gpt if my recollection is correct

That is awkward for people who have used mbr2gpt. If I recall correctly that does not create msr

You even quoted that so why are you asking ?

hsehestedt · Thursday at 10:39 AM

SIW2 said:
You even quoted that so why are you asking ?

Maybe I missed something. I never saw any reference to mbr2gpt from the OP.

But that s a good enough reason for me to avoid MBR2GPT. I will make sure to never use it

. All kidding aside, thanks for that info. I was not aware that this was a limitation of MBR2GPT since I have never used it before.

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