Windows 7 Boot Error *URGENT*

Ethan_Hunt

Ethan_Hunt

Secret Agent Man
Skilled
I have a rather urgent query, for which I need your help guys. I have to send out my last remaining WD 1TB HDD to RMA (only have 9 days left). Apart from that, I have 2 more HDD's in the PC; 1 320GB WD drive and 1 250GB Hitachi Drive.

Today morning when I pulled out my 1TB drive to pack it up, booted my PC and it gave me a "Boot device not found" error. My OS is loaded on the 320GB WD drive and I figured the boot sequenced might have messed up. I tried re-arraging the sequence correctly and still got the same error. Unplugged all drives, loaded them one at a time and still no go. Connected the 1TB drive back again and voila, it booted.

Now the funny thing is, I know for a fact that my 320GB WD drive holds the OS, but it fails to load the OS without the 1TB drive. One thing I noticed in the 'Storage management' screen is that the OS drive in my WD 320GB is shown as the boot page file etc drive, while the 1TB WD drive is listed with System, Primary partition.

I want to avoid a format of the whole drive, unless it's absolutely necessary. My question is, how do I get my PC to boot properly without the 1TB drive being in there?

As far as I remember, I had never touched the 1TB drive for any OS related formatting/installation. So no idea why it's acting up.
 
Do you have a spare clean hdd for backup?
If you have take a backup of the 320 gb drive on it.
Then right click on the 320 gb drive in disk management and see if you get an option of making it a system or bootable volume. Try that.
 
6pack said:
Do you have a spare clean hdd for backup?
If you have take a backup of the 320 gb drive on it.
Then right click on the 320 gb drive in disk management and see if you get an option of making it a system or bootable volume. Try that.
Click to expand...

I do have a portable HDD, which alread has the back up fro 1TB, but it can accomodate the content from 320GB too. Quick question though, Should I just convert 'C' drive to a 'System volume', this shouldn't affect the other partitions on the drive right?

I'll check and report back.
 
This happens due to MS being an asshole with the boot drives. all you need to do is boot up with a bootable windows disk and run fdisk /fixmbr to place MBR on the correct drive.
 
This is how it currently looks:

x8K9pIj.jpg


I have the option to select 'Mark Partition as Active' on the Windows drive, while it's greyed out on the 1TB drive. Is that what I should do?
 
booo said:
This happens due to MS being an asshole with the boot drives. all you need to do is boot up with a bootable windows disk and run fdisk /fixmbr to place MBR on the correct drive.
Click to expand...

fdisk will not work with windows 7. You have to user bootrec command.

Boot your pc with with a Windows 7 installation DVD and with only 320 gb hdd in place. on Setup screen select the repair option, and check whether auto repair is able to detect and repair the windows installation.
you can also go to the command promt and execute these commands

bootrec /fixmbr (writes mbr but does not overwrite partition table)
bootrec /fixboot (writes new boot sector to system partition)
bootrec /scanos (scans for other OS’s that you might want to add to bcd)
bootrec /rebuildbcd

If the auto repair is unable to detect the windows installation and above commands also fail, it's time to use Diskpart. Reboot PC , launch setup, select repair and launch command prompt.

Launch the command prompt and execute diskpart command. More information for diskpart options you can find on internet. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

Basically by using Diskpart command you want to mark the partition containing the windows installation as "Active", which may be the root cause of problem.

Once the partition is marked active reboot and run the repair again. This time the auto repair option should be able to detect the windows installation and it will be able to fix it as well or the bootrec commands will work.

Edit: I just checked the picture of partition layout posted by you. The 320 gb hard disk doesn't have an active partition so windows can not boot from it. Mark it active after booting in to windows via 1 tb hdd and later disconnect the 1 tb hdd boot from dvd and attempt to fix the boot loader.
 
Thank you very much for your detailed response @bigbyte.

Quick question though, can't I repair the MBR while I'm still logged into the OS? or it's not a viable option and should be done through the DVD boot menu only?
 
there is a good gui based bcdedit, you should be able to selectively place the mbr on the correct partition using it.
 
Ethan_Hunt said:
Thank you very much for your detailed response @bigbyte.

Quick question though, can't I repair the MBR while I'm still logged into the OS? or it's not a viable option and should be done through the DVD boot menu only?
Click to expand...

booo said:
there is a good gui based bcdedit, you should be able to selectively place the mbr on the correct partition using it.
Click to expand...

Yes, there is an app called EasyBCD. This allows you modify the BCD and I guess the newer version allows to write the bootloader as well, not very sure about it though. The OP has the advantage that he is able to boot in to the Windows, for those who can't boot in to windows EasyBCD is of no use. Even for EasyBCD, you have to mark the windows partition as active from disk management.

There is one more app called "Easy Recovery Essentials" from the same company, I have never used it but it claims to fix windows boot issues.
 
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