Removed secondary drive (never used), now Windows 7 won't boot

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
C

casowsky

Distinguished
Dec 17, 2011
4
0
18,510
Hi all, my current issue as of this morning:

A few days ago I bought an ASUS T200 tablet/laptop which has a bay for adding a storage hard drive under the keyboard. Since, inside my desktop, I have a WD black, WD blue, and Corsair SSD I decided to swap the SSD into my laptop as I had never once actually used it (was plugged into the motherboard with power but never 'initialised'/didn't otherwise come up in windows). The Black contains the OS while the Blue is used for storage of media and the like.

So after installing and formatting in it's new home I go back to start my desktop and get the error message:

'Reboot and Select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key'

I've since read a couple of threads with the same issue in the last <2hours, and have tried using the Startup Repair utility on the Windows 7 CD, but that hasn't worked for me yet (tried it 3 times). The log showed the various tests performed and all passing and that the problem was such and such, and that it had succeeding in applying a fix, but then every time it restarts to complete the process the utility just starts again. I then changed the boot order to be the WD Black > optical drive (result is that it still boots into startup repair anyway), following that I took the CD out while in the BIOS and then attempted to boot from the drive - this just results in the original error message.

I've heard that if the drive that was removed had priority to boot before the actual drive containing the OS, it will complain because it is now missing a boot pointer. I feel like the order might have been optical drive > SSD > WD Black as the original intention was to get fast boot times with the SSD, but I simply never ended up using it at all, ever.

Anyone able to help me out here? Some specs if they help, feel free to ask for other information if necessary:

- ASUS P8Z68-V LX motherboard (with the graphical bios)
- 2TB WD Black WD2002FAEX-007BA0 drive (OS and programs)
- 1TB WD Blue WD10EALX-009BA0 drive (storage)
- Corsair Force 3 60GB SSD - removed.
- Running Win7 Ultimate x64

Thanks.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
T

tman1

Distinguished
Jan 18, 2009
891
0
19,360
RealBeast, you should reread the problem, because it appears you didn't get it.

Casowsk, boot into the Windows 7 startup repair, open a CMD prompt. Try these 3 commands:
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bcdboot C:\Windows

Exit and reboot.
 
Upvote 1 Downvote
RealBeast

RealBeast

Titan
Moderator
Sep 13, 2010
17,109
473
104,790
Yeah, I was answering three or four posts at the same time and mixed a couple of the posts up. :) As you suggest, repairing the boot record should do it once he has the proper boot order in the bios.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
C

casowsky

Distinguished
Dec 17, 2011
4
0
18,510


Thank you everyone for your help first off.

I tried those 3 commands that you listed but unfortunately the last 2 failed, sorry, I tried it for 5 minutes early in the morning before I left for uni and have forgotten what the exact response was. I probably should've waited until I get home later to provide you folks with some proper data to help you help me, but I just felt like I should give an update and say thanks. I'll comment later on in about ~5 hours after retrying the commands to report back with actual error messages.

Before anyone suggests putting the SSD back in, putting it at the end of the boot order, then removing it after booting I've already gone ahead and formatted it fresh to use in my laptop like an idiot... I probably should have checked the desktop was fine before doing anything irreversible in hindsight. I just never imagined windows essential files could be spread across drives like that.

I'm not too familiar with specific commands related to this stuff, but I have done enough coding to know my way around a command line, might there be anything else I could try? Is there anything else I can use in the startup repair tools to maybe recreate anything essential on the disk itself so that it is self sufficient/only requires itself to boot?

Once again I appreciate all the help so far, this being my first post I wasn't expecting to get a response so quickly. I really do need to get my desktop working again as it has a bunch of software on it I use for uni that my laptop just won't have the grunt for, but at least nothing is wrong with the data. Reformatting would be a last resort though, as google drive always wants to redownload all its GB of existing data, refusing to acknowledge that it's there locally on the damn drive... lol.

So yes I will be posting later, I just thought I would give a timely response, thanks again
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
C

casowsky

Distinguished
Dec 17, 2011
4
0
18,510


Thanks tman, however after executing 'bootrec /rebuildbcd' I get this:

'Successfully scanned Windows installations.
Total identified Windows installations: 1
[1] C:\Windows
Add installation to boot list? Yes(Y)/No(N)/All(A):'

Then I choose yes, and it gives me 'Element not found.'...

So then I went ahead and googled that and got to this link: http://, and followed the instructions in 'Kevin Walcott's post, which seemed to make some headway as the following commands resulted in success this time:

BOOTREC /FIXMBR - operation completed successfully
BOOTREC /FIXBOOT - operation completed successfully
BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD -> success/didn't give me 'element not found'

Then I went ahead and tried Startup Repair, and after a minute it returned that it couldn't be automatically repaired. Upon restarting I just get a black prompt with the words:

'BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart'

And this is where I'm currently at. Any idea of where to go from here?

Thanks again...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
C

casowsky

Distinguished
Dec 17, 2011
4
0
18,510
Ok, crisis averted after a bit more faffing around! Followed the old adage of 'turning it off and on again' - I rebooted after getting that prompt, and windows system recovery this time displayed a message before the screen prompting you to select a windows installation - that windows has detected problems with the install, would I like to repair and restart? Of course I said yes - unfortunately the same 'BOOTMGR is missing' prompt appeared after a restart, so back into system recovery and this time the first screen shows my windows installation.

However, trying to allow system recovery to automatically repair it resulted in a popup saying this version of system recovery is not compatible, I forget what the exact wording was unfortunately (but I'm not about to go trying to recreate it ;) ). So then I proceeded to open a command prompt and execute these commands:

BOOTREC /FIXMBR - 'Operation completed successfully.'
BOOTREC /FIXBOOT - 'Operation completed successfully.'
BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD -> success
BCDBOOT C:\Windows -> success, with a message that I can't remember

Then I restarted, and successfully booted straight to windows! Thanks to everyone for giving me your time and I hope this thread can assist others. As stated above, all my learning came from this thread or the couple of links within this thread and the instructions were very straightforward. I didn't try anything I didn't mention but there might have been a bunch of restarts and fiddling with the commands in between, but the order shouldn't matter too much I assume. Cheers
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom