URGENT HELP!! Boot disc failure!

mindrot

mindrot

mindrot

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Hi,

I hope someone can help me out here as this is rather urgent. Here's what's happened:

I recently upgraded my wife's PC to WINDOWS 7. I installed it on a 500GB drive to replace her older 250GB WIN XP drive. I then removed one of the older 80GB IDE drives from the PC as it was no longer needed. Now there are 3 drives in the PC - one 500GB with WIN 7 on it, one 250GB drive with the old bootable copy of XP still on it and a 1TB drive for backups, etc.

Now what's happened after removing that 80GB drive is I get a BOOT DISC FAILURE error (or something like that) just after the drive detection when it tries to load Windows. This of course isn't letting me boot into WIN 7, however I can still boot into WIN XP (if I change the boot priority in the BIOS). I've tried booting up with only the WIN 7 drive attached to the MOBO but no luck. I've swapped the order of the SATA cables around on the MOBO and still nothing. I'm only able to get WIN XP to boot. However when I'm in WIN XP I can see the WIN 7 drive and all its contents just fine.

It's all very weird as I was able to boot WIN7 without a hitch, it was just until I removed that drive. Another thing that was quite weird was that after installing WIN 7 a week ago the old 80GB didn't show up in Windows (I could see it in the BIOS though). I then had to assign a drive letter to the drive in Disk Management in WIN 7 and then it was visible, it was just after this that I removed this drive.

Here's the config of sorts:
MOBO: Abit AN8 Ultra,
HD: 500GB (SATA II Hitachi Deskstar) WINDOWS 7
HD: 250GB (SATA II Hitachi Deskstar) WINDOWS XP
HD: 1TB (SATA II Samsung) Backup drive
HD: 80GB (IDE Seagate I think) has been removed and is bust.
DVD IDE set to master

Any help would be most appreciated as my wife needs her PC for work.
 
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When you installed win 7 on the new drive did you still have the xp drive attached?. What you need to do is format win 7 drive then disconnect all other drives except the 500gb drive and reinstall win 7 on the 500GB drive.
 
Thanks. I was hoping to leave re-installing as a last resort :(

It was attached. But why would it not be working now? I had both the WIN 7 and WIN XP drives connected before tonight and WIN 7 would boot up just fine...

As a note I wasn't planning on having a dual boot or anything like that. We were going to delete the WIN XP install.
 
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Thanks. Would there be no way of copying those files back to the WIN 7 drive?

Edit: I'm guessing that since I ended up booting into WIN XP (possibly by accident) after removing that 80GB drive it might have over written some of the WIN 7 boot files that's why I can't boot into WIN 7?
 
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mindrot said:
Thanks. Would there be no way of copying those files back to the WIN 7 drive?

Edit: I'm guessing that since I ended up booting into WIN XP (possibly by accident) after removing that 80GB drive it might have over written some of the WIN 7 boot files that's why I can't boot into WIN 7?
Click to expand...

Maybe your trying to boot from the wrong drive and not the one with windows 7 on it have you checked your bios to make sure your booting from the windows 7 drive ?
 
chippy08 said:
Maybe your trying to boot from the wrong drive and not the one with windows 7 on it have you checked your bios to make sure your booting from the windows 7 drive ?
Click to expand...

Nope. I've singled out the Win 7 drive and just had that in on its own. I've also checked the bios and set the boot priorities, etc.
 
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Download and run EasyBCD in windows XP. This will give you the current win7 bootloader settings which you can modify to suit the current setup without the 80Gb drive.

It is a fairly simple program once you get the idea of what you need to do. There is extensive online help.

andy.
 
There will be a 100mb partition/file created by your windows 7 install on one of the other drives (most likely the 80gb one). Dunno why windows sees doing this a logical but hey thats microsoft for ya.

Two options really, boot from your windows 7 disc and when you get to the partitioning section, identify the drive.

Alternatively, re-install windows 7 with just the single drive attached.
 
If Andy's method doesn't work for you. Attach the 250GB XP grive as the primary drive, the 500GB Windows 7 drive second and the 1TB third. Set the BIOS to boot from the XP drive and pop the Windoes 7 install disk in the drive. On the first or second screen after loading, you will have an option to repair your computer, it will scan for problems and fix the boot menu giving you 2 boot options: Earlier version of Windows and Windows 7.
 
w3bbo said:
There will be a 100mb partition/file created by your windows 7 install on one of the other drives (most likely the 80gb one). Dunno why windows sees doing this a logical but hey thats microsoft for ya.

Two options really, boot from your windows 7 disc and when you get to the partitioning section, identify the drive.

Alternatively, re-install windows 7 with just the single drive attached.
Click to expand...

Thanks. It turns out that the 80GB drive isn't working any more, unfortunately it got damaged last night :( I actually wanted to put it back in to see if it would all work again with all the drives in place.

When you say "identify" you mean I can then select the drive with Win 7 on?

Senture said:
If Andy's method doesn't work for you. Attach the 250GB XP grive as the primary drive, the 500GB Windows 7 drive second and the 1TB third. Set the BIOS to boot from the XP drive and pop the Windoes 7 install disk in the drive. On the first or second screen after loading, you will have an option to repair your computer, it will scan for problems and fix the boot menu giving you 2 boot options: Earlier version of Windows and Windows 7.
Click to expand...

Would this mean I can then repair Win 7 and then I'd have two versions of Win 7 to boot into afterwards. Sorry for the confusion.

I'm also guessing I can then delete Win XP off the 250GB drive when Win 7 is working again?

Thanks a ton for your help guys, it's really most appreciated.
 
w3bbo said:
There will be a 100mb partition/file created by your windows 7 install on one of the other drives (most likely the 80gb one). Dunno why windows sees doing this a logical but hey thats microsoft for ya.

Two options really, boot from your windows 7 disc and when you get to the partitioning section, identify the drive.

Alternatively, re-install windows 7 with just the single drive attached.
Click to expand...


I think windows 7 installs its boot loader into the drive currently set as the boot when it is installed. This is usually the boot drive which windows XP or other earlier windows used.
I had this problem when installing onto my PC with windows XP in the second partition of a drive but the boot partition was the first partition of the drive.

I removed the drive and had no boot. I recaptured the vista (win 7) boot using BCD and all is now well.

I now run only win7 but have left the old installation just in case there are files I need, it is no longer bootable, just old storage.


andy.
 
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mindrot said:
Would this mean I can then repair Win 7 and then I'd have two versions of Win 7 to boot into afterwards. Sorry for the confusion.

I'm also guessing I can then delete Win XP off the 250GB drive when Win 7 is working again?
Click to expand...

This would give you the ability to boot from either XP or Windows 7. If you're looking at having Windows 7 only, it would be better to configure the 500GB drive as the primary and run the repair steps so this drive has the boot files, then you can remove the other drives without leaving the system in a non-bootable state :)
 
Senture said:
This would give you the ability to boot from either XP or Windows 7. If you're looking at having Windows 7 only, it would be better to configure the 500GB drive as the primary and run the repair steps so this drive has the boot files, then you can remove the other drives without leaving the system in a non-bootable state :)
Click to expand...

Sorry for my ignorance, but would I configure the 500GB drive as the primary in the bios?
 
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nkata said:
Download and run EasyBCD in windows XP. This will give you the current win7 bootloader settings which you can modify to suit the current setup without the 80Gb drive.

It is a fairly simple program once you get the idea of what you need to do. There is extensive online help.

andy.
Click to expand...

I was looking at the EasyBCD website (http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1) and it sounds great: "...Repair the Windows bootloader, change your boot drive, create a bootable USB, and more!"

I might give just this a try first and see what it does :D
 
The best option is to reinstall on 500gb drive. That way you will be able to boot staright from that drive. EasyBCD will let you boot to win 7 via the xp drive. You still have to have the old drive installed.
 
dits said:
The best option is to reinstall on 500gb drive. That way you will be able to boot staright from that drive. EasyBCD will let you boot to win 7 via the xp drive. You still have to have the old drive installed.
Click to expand...

:( Argh!... I'll try a Win 7 repair then as mentioned above.

Thanks again :D
 
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