8.1 clean install - no system reserved partition?

[freebooter]

I installed 8 when there was the cheap deal. The install created a small (350mb?) partition as well as the main install partition. My 8 install got damaged so I have done a clean install of 8.1. I deleted the old 8 partitions during the install and pointed 8.1 at the resultant unformatted free space on the disk and let it do its thing.

Now it is installed I can see that it hasn't created the small partition that 8 did and there is just one partition. I made the 8.1 install dvd via the upgrade iso trick.

Has 8.1 done away with the need for a separate system reserved partition or has the upgrade iso install failed to create the needed partitions because it was supposed to use existing ones?

thanks

 

[freebooter]

More information. 8.1 was installed to the beginning of the secondary hard drive. The first hard drive has XP at the beginning and also has kubuntu installed. kubuntu's Grub handled os selection.

There is a folder in the 8.1 partition called Recovery and it seems that 8.1 created a folder called Boot in the XP partition and maybe altered the XP boot.ini.

I reinstalled grub and that no longer sees the XP install. Instead when I select the 8.1 option it boots into a windows boot manager that gives the option of 8.1 or 'Older Windows System'. Selecting that option reboots the pc and then when I select 8.1 in grub it goes into XP instead.