Devastated Windows 7 Install :D

[T4RG4]

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...

 

[T4RG4]

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?

 

[T4RG4]

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]

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