I found a work around the need for the 100MB partition, by accident.
Bare with me for a second. :) I bought a laptop and made an image of the entire drive. I then upgraded to a different drive. I first formatted the new drive into 1 big NTFS partition via a Linux Live CD. Then rebooted (with my Image Recovery DVD in the
laptop) , plugged in the USB drive that houses the 35GB image and waited for the install to finish.
35min later, rebooted and got a error stating the boot loader was missing. Great. I immediately knew why; the 100MB partition was not there. So, instead of tearing the drive apart and reloading the image again I thought, I'll do a Repair from the Windows
Recovery DVDs I made. Booted up the Disk 1 and guess what ...no repair option.
This is why I despise Real Windows DVDs not coming with systems anymore. Vendors make their own and leave out options!
Luckily, I have an OEM Windows 7 Pro DVD from my custom made system, I loaded that, and did a Repair which took 2 secs to complete. Rebooted and Tada! Win7 loaded without a hitch. Checked Disk Management and no 100MB partition exists.
100MB is nothing these days I know but, Win7 runs fine without it.