Acer recovery partition

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Tim Tisdall <tisdall-DXT9u3ndKiSh7up9GtFB90EOCMrvLtNR at public.gmane.org>

Wow.  That should not happen.  But who are you going to argue with?

Acer support (in my experience) isn't willing to discuss things that
are clearly wrong-as-built.  My example: specs for a notebook said
that it could handle 4G of RAM (I think that was the number) but the
notebook would freeze with that amount.  It turned out that an earlier
BIOS could handle that amount.  But they claimed that this wasn't a
bug.  No recourse (I couldn't reach out and strangle the support
person because he was in Texas).

(It turned out that Linux's video driver for that notebook's nVidia
chip had a bug that if the buffer were above 2G, it would curdle the
screen, so I could not have used the 4G anyway.  The driver folks
didn't admit that it was a bug for a couple of years, so maybe Open
Source isn't 100% better.  Of course a really good explanation is that 
they had no specifications to code to.)

I think I understand partitions etc. but I sure don't understand all
the observed behaviour.

On my new notebook (Lenovo Yoga 2 pro), I installed Fedora 20 (secure
boot and all!).  In the process, I asked the F20 installer to shrink
the Win8.1 partition drastically.  After that, Win8.1 would not boot.

My superstitious explanation is:

- ntfsresize (or whatever) is willing to move unmoveable files
  (like the swap file)

- this makes it way more effective at shrinking NTFS partitions than
  Win8.1's built-in resizer

- in the past, after ntfsresizing, I've found the first Windows boot said 
  it had to repair the system, which it did with no problem.

- My normal procedure was rebooting Windows after resizing (usually with a 
  live Ubuntu) but before installing.  I vaguely remember this mattering.  
  I didn't do that this time.

- Maybe Win8.1 is pickier or less able.

- UEFI is a new variable, but I don't see that it is implicated

My fix this time was to wander around the system restore menus (very
complicated, multi-level, not well explained), trying a few
non-drastic ones without success.  I finally agreed to restore the
whole system WITHOUT repartitioning.  I then had to re-introduce
myself to Win8.1 (as if it were a brand new machine) but Fedora 20
remained.
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