Windows trying to boot off the wrong drive.

shauncr91

shauncr91

shauncr91

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Today I replaced my old HDD for a new SSD. I formatted the new drive and installed Windows 7.

When I boot up I get "Drive error, please insert CD and press any key" (Or something to that effect). I put my CD in and do as it says and it continues to boot as normal.

I've checked in Disk Management and it's showing my new SSD as "Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition". But it's also showing one of my secondary storage drives as "System, Active, Primary Partition", and so I can only assume Windows is trying to boot from this drive instead of my SSD.

Without formatting the second drive, how can I make it so it just sits there as a normal drive and doesn't make the PC think it's a boot drive?

Ta
 
Have you installed Windows on the SSD while the old drive has been removed out of the system? If you left it in there then some boot files will go on the older drive. It's best to make sure only the optical and the SSD is plugged in to ensure all boot files end up where it's suppose to be. After that, you can remove any boot related partitions on the old HDD.
 
The drive it's wrongly detecting has never had windows on it, it's simply a 1TB drive for storing files and large applications. The drive which had Windows on before isn't even in the PC anymore :/

But yes, the drive was still connected, along with 2 others but those are working fine :(
 
Sounds like some boot files from the install went on the wrong drive. I would remove all your drives apart from the SSD and reinstall Windows again.
 
You don't need to re-install windows for this problem, once again EasyBCD to the rescue!
Boot into windows using the CD method you have been using, install and run EasyBCD, then install a bootblock and boot menu onto the windows drive.
 
Unfortunately all of the guides I've found are for dual/triple booting rather than using the program as a repairer.

I generally work from the bottom upwards starting at the BCD Deployment tab, selecting the partition to install the BCD to, then installing that and writing the MBR to it.
Then choose the Add New Entry tab and add a new OS entry as per requirements, then I choose the Edit Boot Menu tab to rename the entry to a more verbose listing, making sure it is the default and adjusting the boot timer as necessary and saving the changes.
Then with a bit of luck if you select the View settings tab it should have a valid bootloader entry in the overview.

Hope this really quick and rough write up helps.
 
BCD ? whats that , run the windows recovery disk go into command promt type in bootrec.exe , there u have 4 options to rebuild the boot manager

Image-73.png
 
Also depending on the Bios, it may also have an hard drive boot order too, as well as the normal boot order (HDD, CD etc). Make sure the SSD is set as the primary boot device in this setting.
 
Thanks for all the help guys, unfortunately none of the things mentioned seemed to work so I had to reformat windows with all drives disconnectcted, this although awkward has fixed the problem :)
 
always install with only one drive connected

You can fix this using the Windows disc and bootrec
 
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