Metafilter, am I thwarted?
July 22, 2010 7:58 PM Subscribe
[Win7 Filter] I think I seriously screwed up my boot partitions and need some help with multiple HD / OS box.
I recently decided to move from XP to Win7 64 bit. Because I thought I was clever, I decided to buy a fresh hard drive and install 7 onto it, thinking I could move over all my files and whatever, then wipe the drive clean and have a shiny fresh drive that I could set up for storage or whatever else grabbed my fancy.
At first, everything seemed fine - I added the new hard disk to the machine (WD SATA 1TB drive), formatted it, and did a custom win7 install to make sure it installed onto the new drive, and not onto the old drive's XP partition.
After I finished installing, patching, moving files, etx, I tried to format the old drive and was given a message that I could not, due to access levels, even when I ran system manager as administrator.
I put it down to "OK, that's odd", and decided to just shut off the machine and remove the old drive.
I started back up, and got a system disk error. Tried running the Win7 DVD and it won't see the Win7 install at all!
I put the old drive back in, and it came back up and happily asked if I wanted to boot to Win7 or XP. I was able to successfully get back into Win7 without a problem, and when I look at the system folder, it's clearly installed on the new drive.
I'm guessing that somehow the MBR and boot sectors got written onto the old drive, despite me telling it to do a full install on the new one.
Is there a way out of this? I've seen plenty of tutorials for ADDING an additional OS in Win7, but removing, not so much...
I recently decided to move from XP to Win7 64 bit. Because I thought I was clever, I decided to buy a fresh hard drive and install 7 onto it, thinking I could move over all my files and whatever, then wipe the drive clean and have a shiny fresh drive that I could set up for storage or whatever else grabbed my fancy.
At first, everything seemed fine - I added the new hard disk to the machine (WD SATA 1TB drive), formatted it, and did a custom win7 install to make sure it installed onto the new drive, and not onto the old drive's XP partition.
After I finished installing, patching, moving files, etx, I tried to format the old drive and was given a message that I could not, due to access levels, even when I ran system manager as administrator.
I put it down to "OK, that's odd", and decided to just shut off the machine and remove the old drive.
I started back up, and got a system disk error. Tried running the Win7 DVD and it won't see the Win7 install at all!
I put the old drive back in, and it came back up and happily asked if I wanted to boot to Win7 or XP. I was able to successfully get back into Win7 without a problem, and when I look at the system folder, it's clearly installed on the new drive.
I'm guessing that somehow the MBR and boot sectors got written onto the old drive, despite me telling it to do a full install on the new one.
Is there a way out of this? I've seen plenty of tutorials for ADDING an additional OS in Win7, but removing, not so much...
Best answer: Hah! I did the exact same thing a couple of weeks ago. Except that I went one step worse than you, and I completely formatted the old drive so that I was unable to boot anything at all. You are right, that windows 7 (what the hell was it thinking) seems to use the boot loader of the other drive rather than the one you are installing it to.
So the reason that I could not see the Windows 7 install when booting from the Win7 DVD was that my new hard drive did not have the boot flag set. I remedied this by using a Linux live cd to boot the machine, then using GParted to turn on the 'boot' flag.
Next, when you boot from the windows DVD you should now see your windows 7 install, the problem is that it has no MBR or a broken MBR or whatever. This should be fairly straightforward to fix, you can google "windows 7 boot repair" for more info. There is an option in the windows DVD repair menu called "Startup Repair". Click that and it might fix it for you. Details here:
http://www.windowsreinstall.com/win7/windows7ultimaterepairguides/
If that doesn't work (didn't for me), then you can enter the repair command prompt and run a couple of commands to repair the boot. I'll try to find those other commands.
posted by theyexpectresults at 10:06 PM on July 22, 2010
So the reason that I could not see the Windows 7 install when booting from the Win7 DVD was that my new hard drive did not have the boot flag set. I remedied this by using a Linux live cd to boot the machine, then using GParted to turn on the 'boot' flag.
Next, when you boot from the windows DVD you should now see your windows 7 install, the problem is that it has no MBR or a broken MBR or whatever. This should be fairly straightforward to fix, you can google "windows 7 boot repair" for more info. There is an option in the windows DVD repair menu called "Startup Repair". Click that and it might fix it for you. Details here:
http://www.windowsreinstall.com/win7/windows7ultimaterepairguides/
If that doesn't work (didn't for me), then you can enter the repair command prompt and run a couple of commands to repair the boot. I'll try to find those other commands.
posted by theyexpectresults at 10:06 PM on July 22, 2010
Best answer: Errr... right. Don't type while distracted.
Your bootloader is on your xp drive right now, so, when you remove it, you're getting the error you describe. EasyBCD will move that boot information to your Win7 drive.
Also, if that doesn't work, simply remove your old drive, and do a re-install of 7. Then, put the old drive back in (make sure you're set to boot of your new drive) and then copy over your files etc.
posted by defcom1 at 10:07 PM on July 22, 2010
Your bootloader is on your xp drive right now, so, when you remove it, you're getting the error you describe. EasyBCD will move that boot information to your Win7 drive.
Also, if that doesn't work, simply remove your old drive, and do a re-install of 7. Then, put the old drive back in (make sure you're set to boot of your new drive) and then copy over your files etc.
posted by defcom1 at 10:07 PM on July 22, 2010
Best answer: After the above, I had to run bootrec to fix the MBR.
posted by theyexpectresults at 10:11 PM on July 22, 2010
posted by theyexpectresults at 10:11 PM on July 22, 2010
EasyBCD is pretty damned awesome. I highly recommend it. Great software - don't let the difficulty of finding it on the web fool you, that program is easily the best boot utility I have ever seen for Windows, bar none. Amazingly easy, insanely comprehensive.
posted by koeselitz at 10:16 PM on July 22, 2010
posted by koeselitz at 10:16 PM on July 22, 2010
[For one thing, EasyBCD will set boot flags and run bootrec automatically for you so you don't have to. It's quite nice.]
posted by koeselitz at 10:20 PM on July 22, 2010
posted by koeselitz at 10:20 PM on July 22, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks, guys! I'll download EasyBCD and take a shot at this after work tonight!
posted by BZArcher at 4:44 AM on July 23, 2010
posted by BZArcher at 4:44 AM on July 23, 2010
Response by poster: Well, OK, guys and/or gals and/or possible sentient software constructs. :)
posted by BZArcher at 4:45 AM on July 23, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by BZArcher at 4:45 AM on July 23, 2010 [1 favorite]
The above posters are correct. In a computer, the first hard drive (as set by your BIOS, but usually SATA-0 or the master drive on the primary IDE cable) is the boot drive.
There is a piece of software on that drive that starts up the computer. This exists outside the standard C: D: or /dev/sda1 partition scheming. This is called the boot sector.
When you install an OS, it will modify that software on that first drive so that you can boot into the new OS.
Moral of the story: when you are installing a new OS on a different hard drive, always hook up that hard drive as the first drive in the computer so it will operate independently of anything else in the computer. If you want to multi-boot after that, modify the boot loader to point to the other drive.
posted by gjc at 4:53 AM on July 23, 2010
There is a piece of software on that drive that starts up the computer. This exists outside the standard C: D: or /dev/sda1 partition scheming. This is called the boot sector.
When you install an OS, it will modify that software on that first drive so that you can boot into the new OS.
Moral of the story: when you are installing a new OS on a different hard drive, always hook up that hard drive as the first drive in the computer so it will operate independently of anything else in the computer. If you want to multi-boot after that, modify the boot loader to point to the other drive.
posted by gjc at 4:53 AM on July 23, 2010
Windows assumes you want to dual-boot so it modifies the existing boot sector. I made the same mistake you made and I think I resolved it by simply booting up with the install disc and running FIXBOOT and FIXMBR with the recovery console.
posted by damn dirty ape at 3:56 PM on July 23, 2010
posted by damn dirty ape at 3:56 PM on July 23, 2010
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posted by defcom1 at 10:04 PM on July 22, 2010