Windows won't boot if I remove secondary HDD

gazzab · 31 Oct 2012 at 12:54

I just installed Windows 8 and it boots even slower than Windows 7 did on my PC. On my friend's PC you barely even see the loading screen then it's straight to the lock screen.

I have 2 other HDDs hooked up, each with Windows 7 installed on them, which I thought might be causing boot to be slow (even after I switched off the OS choice startup screen).

My issue is, my computer won't boot at all when I remove the other drives. I've checked and double checked the boot order in the BIOS, switched my Win8 drive over to every SATA port, nothing seems to work. Is there any way I can get this drive to boot without having to reinstall Windows?

Cheers

wazza300 · 31 Oct 2012 at 12:57

pop in the windows dvd and boot from it then do a startup repair,it should fix it then

vanandjuanunited · 31 Oct 2012 at 12:58

As above the install has put some files on one of these hdds and thus cannot boot without it

gazzab · 31 Oct 2012 at 13:24

Hmm, the only option on the disk was to do an 'Automatic repair - fix issues that are stopping windows from starting' which didn't detect anything, even with only the main drive hooked up

wazza300 · 31 Oct 2012 at 13:40

try it a few times it usually takes two or three attempts to fix it

gazzab · 31 Oct 2012 at 14:05

Sweet, all sorted

only took another go and was done in seconds. Cheers!

R.C.Anderson · 31 Oct 2012 at 15:18

I've found this in the past quite a bit. My guess would be windows tries to keep the MBR together on the same drive, so if you've already got an installation on a drive, it'll stick the new one there too.

It's why I always unplug all other drives when I'm installing a new OS