Not too long ago I’ve seen Zenworks Configuration Management installed for two identical desktops with a OEM Windows 7 operating system and UEFI /w GPT. Everything appeared fine, until a reboot. At a reboot Windows 7 would fail to boot, would try to load the recovery tools, but fail again and again. I had no time to figure out the root cause. The HDD was wiped, Windows 7 reinstalled, then ZCM was left off.

A few weeks ago I took a ZCM course and I overheard about something interesting. Data collected and stored in ZCM is not stored within the OS partition. ZCM takes a sliver (~10mb) off the OS partition and makes it it’s own. This is a well hidden partition and will NOT appear in Windows Disk Manager. I’m assuming Novell never planned to have this working on GPT (or have it patched) as it is relatively new in terms of being implemented widely. End result is forcing a change on GPT made for another system.

Recovery

As much as I love finding solutions, I don’t have anything here to test with to recreate this issue. Others have simply resorted to clearing out the partitions and giving them a fresh Win 7 install.

If I had to tackle this again (if I do, I’ll be sure to give an update here) I would look into the system with GParted to see if I could rearrange things back to the way they were (delete the ZCM partition, resize the partition it shrunk). I had tried recovery disks in the past when I initially had the issue but with no luck. Unfortunately GPT is something that is new to me as well and something I will be sure to look into as it becomes more prevalent.

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