Devastated Windows 7 Install :D

T4RG4

T4RG4

T4RG4

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Joined
22 Jul 2009
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28
What a night of pain...

Recently bought a pre-built i7 from Oc with two drives, a BD reader and Intel Extreme SSD (for the OS)

It came without OS (as requested)

Then I installed Win7RC without any problems

Tonight a couple of Spinpoint F1's arrived, which I attempted to RAID0. My problems started almost immediately. Booting to Windows, it did not recognise the drivers. Much fiddling around and reading of manuals later, I set the correct BIOS RAID config (so the drivers were recognised during boot) and all seemed to be fine... except Windows would no longer startup. I kept getting "ntldr missing" which, after much googling (via laptop) resulted in nothing but thoughts of "arghhhhhhhhhhh".

So, maybe the other drives were interfering - I removed them

Windows booted correctly...

Trying to reboot, it failed with the same error. A problem with the SSD all of a sudden?

After another three hours mucking around, I thought I'd just nuke Windows and start over. Only the Win7 installer kept telling me it could not find a suitable partition on ANY of the drivers I tried to install on.

Is there some way I can format the SSD, bring it back to life and reinstall Windows? I tried format on the Win install, so it appears to have wiped the SSD but Windows would still not allow an install.

I've just tried removing everything again and running with the main drive (SSD) into Win install and its taking forever on the Setup is Starting screen...

I'm lost!

or rather I was... after a very long wait, setup is now installing Win7 to the SDD again...

Very strange...
 
ntldr missing sounds like bios is trying to boot from the raid array instead of the ssd... there should be an option either within bios to set the first boot drive, or, there might be an option to press delete or escape (or similar) to select a boot drive while bios is going through the motions...

good luck
 
For some reason I kept typing 'Drivers' when I meant 'Drive' oops.

Anyway...

I thought about the boot priority, but when entering the appropriate screen during boot, I can select from many an option (Floppy, CD etc) but there is only one title for 'HDD'. That doesnt then take me to a submenu so which HDD is it selecting?

I dont believe the SSD to be titled under anything else, or is it?
 
You will have to enter into the bios to adjust the priority of the hard drives. Such an option wouldn't appear during boot (by pressing F8 or whatever).

Basically you can select the boot order of devices, such as cdrom, hd, floppy etc. In addition when there are multiple hard drives there should be another option to choose the priority, or which hd is the boot drive, the one selected first on the list.
 
During the boot process you can press F12, to determine which drive you want to boot from. In that menu just HDD appears.

In the BIOS I can alter the priority of boot devices and, last time I checked, the SSD was at the top of the tree so to speak. Not sure if I checked that towards the end, maybe it was shifted down the list when attaching the RAID drives?
 
T4RG4 said:
In the BIOS I can alter the priority of boot devices and, last time I checked, the SSD was at the top of the tree so to speak. Not sure if I checked that towards the end, maybe it was shifted down the list when attaching the RAID drives?
Click to expand...

I think its quite possible.
 
Okay, that would appear to have been the problem! Gah, it's always the final thing you try.

Appreciate the help from everyone, thanks very much.

Now in the HDD forum trying to get RAID0 drives to be allocated :D
 
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