Windows 7 install requires secondary hard drive to boot?

AFeils · Mar 20, 2013

I was thinking about ditching my second hard drive which I am currently using as a backup drive. I have music files and other misc media files on it. I have a family friend who had their PC hard drive fail and want to reinstall to get everything back up and running. When I unplug the 500GB Western Digital Secondary drive I receive an error message. It is something like Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media. I went into the bios and specified the boot order to be DVD Drive first and then Vertex 3 SSD. There is no other boot devices specified after that in the Bios. Do i need to run something in the command line to fix how my SSD boots?

My current specs are as follows:
Asus P8Z68-V PRO Motherboard
Intel i7 2600K CPU
ASUS nvidia 670GTX TOPS Graphics card
8 GB Gskill 1600mhz RAM
Vertex 3 SSD Boot Drive
500GB Western Digital 7200 RPM

jitpublisher · Mar 20, 2013

You have apparently at one time or another had a Windows installation on this drive, and you did not unplug the drive when your reinstalled Windows on your SSD. If this is what has happened (and I am pretty certain it is), the Windows installation is using the bootstrap, or boot manager files located on that hard drive to initialize the boot, even if it is booting to the SSD. So when you remove the that drive, your current Windows installation suddenly has no boot manager files to initialize the boot process.

This is one of the reasons we say you should unplug all hard drives except the one you are doing the installation on when you install Windows.

smorizio · Mar 20, 2013

with the asus bios not only check the boot order but in the bios check that the ssd is the first hard drive.

AFeils · Mar 20, 2013

I guess that makes sense now that I think about it. I think I tested a beta of an os on this hard drive a year or so ago. Does that mean I have to do a clean install to solve the issue or is their a known program to help me solve this issue?

jitpublisher :

Hawkeye22 · Mar 20, 2013

You should be able to unplug the second drive, and run a repair install on the SSD.

AFeils · Mar 20, 2013

I know that there is two options for repairing the hard drive. One of which is the startup repair which I tried just prior to this message. I unplugged the second hard drive and did the the startup repair twice with no change in the result. I know that I can do an in place "upgrade repair" but I don't know how that could work without needing both hard drives plugged in to start the process. Am I going to have to end up doing a complete clean install to solve my problem. Please help. Too many applications and settings to reconfigure......

Hawkeye22 :

Hawkeye22 · Mar 20, 2013

If you are forced to clean install, be sure to unplug all drives except for the one you will be installing the OS onto. This will force windows to put the boot loader and OS on the same drive thus eliminating this problem in the future. You can reattach the remaining drives once the OS is completely installed.

casper1973 · Mar 20, 2013

If you have a Windows 7 installation CD you could try the following. First remove the HDD and leave only the SSD connected.

Get to the Recovery Environment
1) Make sure your CD/DVD drive is first boot option
2) Put the Windows 7 installation disc in the disc drive, and then start the computer.
3) Press a key when you are prompted.
4) Select a language etc then click Next.
5) Click Repair your computer.
6) Click the operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next.
7) In the System Recovery Options dialog box, click Command Prompt.

Re-create boot sector, MBR and BCD
At the command prompt type the following lines, pressing enter after each one.

bootrec /fixboot

bootrec /fixmbr

bootrec /rebuildbcd

After the final command it should start scanning for an OS. Hopefully it finds one and will ask if you want to add the installation to the boot list - type Y and press enter.

It should now say completed successfully. Reboot the computer and good luck!

PS.
This should really have been step 1 - BACK UP EVERYTHING IMPORTANT FIRST.
While this should work there is a chance it could leave Windows completely unbootable... even with both drives in.

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Windows 7 install requires secondary hard drive to boot?

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