What the hell

mikkyh · 29 Jan 2011 at 16:50

Ok. This is really bugging me. There isnt REALLY a problem but I have that urge to have everything running perfectly.

Basically...Ive got two hard drives. An SSD and a HDD. I built my PC a while ago and installed Windows 7 to the SSD. However, very recently I get BOOTMGR is missing on startup unless I boot from the HDD instead of the SSD. It's really weird. When booting from the SSD, where I installed windows, I get the error...when I boot from the HDD it starts up completely normally.

Windows 7 install is recognising the SSD as a System partition and the HDD as the primary partition.

It still works but I wont be able to sleep if i find out WHY this is happening.

DragonQ · 29 Jan 2011 at 16:58

Which partition is marked "boot"?

mikkyh · 29 Jan 2011 at 17:07

DragonQ said:
Which partition is marked "boot"?

BCD says C:\ (the SSD).

Emphacy · 29 Jan 2011 at 17:29

This doesn't make any sense, BOOTMGR is what boots up windows on startup. If the SSD says it's missing but it boots from the HDD, then Windows must surely be installed on the HDD.

Is windows installed on both the SSD and HDD or just the one? What is your boot sequence, and have you set them to "Master" & "Slave" using the Jumpers?

rpstewart · 29 Jan 2011 at 18:33

If you asked Windows to install on the SSD then it will be installed on the SSD.

However Windows will put the boot loader on whatever drive enumerates as the lowest disk ID at the time of installation. Therefore if there are multiple drives attached then it is possible for the boot loader to be installed on a different device to the one on which Windows is installed.

mikkyh · 29 Jan 2011 at 20:03

rpstewart said:
If you asked Windows to install on the SSD then it will be installed on the SSD.

However Windows will put the boot loader on whatever drive enumerates as the lowest disk ID at the time of installation. Therefore if there are multiple drives attached then it is possible for the boot loader to be installed on a different device to the one on which Windows is installed.

Thing is...its only just started doing this. Previously it would boot fine from the SSD, then one day I switched on my PC and I got the error. Restarted, F8, booted from the HDD and it worked fine.

I only installed windows once and it was definatley onto the 40GB SSD as the OS is the only thing I have on it.

madindehead · 29 Jan 2011 at 21:46

Thing is, did you install Windows on the SSD with the HDD still connected?

If so, then it can happen that BOOTMGR is on another drive. Happens to me sometimes. Will remedy it once I buy an SSD, then I'll be removing all my drives, and starting from scratch!