Cannot use recovery partition for Win7 after installing OpenSuse 12.1

Oops, I must have been mapping from the info in your first post or suffering from our local heat wave :smiley:

In that case, the two partitions (as a default Win 7 would also install) needed by Win 7 are those at sda2 & sda3. Normally, one system partition containing the Windows Recovery Environment, a boot manager, and some system files. However the OEM’s (e.g. Sony) can produce their own version of that - IIRC there are size restrictions imposed by MS on that file. The OEM’S extend the rescue and recovery with a larger Recovery partition of there own which can hold more backup versions. The other is the C: partition. The OEM’s recovery partition is a third one. Having it first on the disk may facilitate Sony’s Assist button booting wrt to code in the MBR.

BTW, my lenovo ThinkPad also has 3 primary partitions but different setup (sda1 System, sda2 C:, and sda4 Recovery placed at the end of the disk, with sda3 as EP).