grrr, PC won't load windows anymore

tomos · 26 Sep 2009 at 19:06

had my new drive ext for a few days and decided to connect internally. swapped it with a sata dvd writer i had. just sticks on 'starting windows'.
ok, swap back to old config. same. am now swapping drive boot order in the bios and no matter which one i select it still sticks on 'starting windows'. i might be wrong but if i choose to boot off a drive without the boot sector on it, then shouldn't i get an error?

oddly, even popping in a win7 cd i just burnt off sticks on loading windows as well

win7 RC x64
intel d975xbx mobo

something daft already!! · 26 Sep 2009 at 19:09

Hmm, Have you tried a startup repair? Or boot with last known good config?

tomos · 26 Sep 2009 at 19:28

last known good config isn't an option, start repair also just seems to freeze

Auraomega · 26 Sep 2009 at 19:30

Booting from a drive without a sector sometimes just skips to the next device, same thing happens on my NC10 when I messed up my flash drive install.

I did have the same issue a while back with my own PC, I installed a new optical drive and suddenly Windoze wouldn't load, I went through lots of things including resetting the BIOS, nothing worked until I changed an option on the BIOS (one incidentally that has never been enabled in the past) to make my SATA appear as IDE - my PC booted. If I disable the option my PC hangs :rolleyes:

tomos · 26 Sep 2009 at 19:37

mine hasn't changed. i just disconnected my 2 raptors ( not sure which i boot off yet) and get a no bootable devicee error. now when i popin that win7 dvd it goes further than last time.

am guessing i screwed the pooch on my install disk somehow. at least it isn't a physical fault. now to try 1 raptor at a time

tomos · 26 Sep 2009 at 20:37

screw it. not worth the time. i've unplugged the rappies and connected them to my other pc. i'm making images, wiping em and starting again. could have installed win7 3 times over tonight.

tomos · 27 Sep 2009 at 08:15

ok, still doing it. something funky is going on.

niko · 27 Sep 2009 at 11:42

does it boot with just the os hd but all other hd's / dvds drives removed?

tomos · 27 Sep 2009 at 11:48

with just the rappies earlier it didn't. now both are formatted. i'm going to pop in one drive at a time when i get home and try to boot off a cd or something and see which drive causes things to stop.

tomos · 27 Sep 2009 at 17:04

ok, trying again. 1 drive at a time and so far it's working. am doing a basic 'does it start the windows installation' test

sata dvdwriter and now on my 3rd hard disk connected. all to the intel controllers only.

sil and ide drives are disconnected

this will either really annoy me and just work now, or it'll be a drive or a sata port on the sil thats gone.

update

ok, works with 8 sata hard drives in there (sata dvd writer disconnected). 1 IDE drive to go. think i have a feeling i know what's up in this saga

tomos · 27 Sep 2009 at 18:55

ok i was right as to the what, just not the why.

i connected the IDE drive and the win install disk went to load something or other. i have a drive with a true crypt partition and assumed that was screwing it up. ive connected it up to another pc now externally and it's just a normal drive. the truecrypt one inst causing any probs at all. somehow, during all this messing around this drive has gone funky and is stopping windows from booting and now from installing again. bizarre.

i'm backing it up and wiping it. hopefully that will sort it.

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yay, sorted