Win. 7 won't boot after removing secondary drive

[jwhite85]

Hi, When I installed windows 7 I had 2 hard drives hooked up, a SATA drive "C:" and an IDE "D:". I installed windows to the SATA drive and now want to remove the IDE but when I do I get a message that says "reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press any key." While researching this I have seen that windows will sometimes put some data on the secondary drive while installing and I should have pulled it before installing windows. Is this what happened to me and if so is there any way I can fix it without doing a "repair install" from the windows dvd? I've tried running the startup repair from the install disk and it didn't work. Thanks.

 

[apache_lives]

the secondary drive most likely was a higher priority and had a boot pointer to your "C" drive - pop in your windows 7 disk and select the repair option - that should find and fix your problem - may have to do it twice from experience tho..

 

[jwhite85]

Hi, When I installed windows 7 I had 2 hard drives hooked up, a SATA drive "C:" and an IDE "D:". I installed windows to the SATA drive and now want to remove the IDE but when I do I get a message that says "reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press any key." While researching this I have seen that windows will sometimes put some data on the secondary drive while installing and I should have pulled it before installing windows. Is this what happened to me and if so is there any way I can fix it without doing a "repair install" from the windows dvd? I've tried running the startup repair from the install disk and it didn't work. Thanks.[/quote

I forgot to mention that windows xp was installed on the IDE drive when I installed windows 7 to the SATA drive.

 

[maddy617]

your boot sector may have been on the ide drive best to plug it in back aerything up and then remove, format reinstall

 

[lesterf1020]

apache_lives is correct. Follow his advice.

 

[bigdogchris]

Some times when you install Windows and you have two hard drives plugged in, and you install to the secondary drive (as the bios see's it), the boot manager may be installed on the drive other than the one you select for the OS to be installed in.

- Tip - When you install your OS, only have one drive plugged in.

As it was already mentioned, the fix to this is to leave the second drive unplugged and to run the repair fix from the diagnostic tools from either the F8 menu or by booting to your Win 7 installation medium.

Another thing is to make sure you do not attempt to create the partition ahead of time to avoid the 100MB system partition 7 create. This partition automatically goes on the hard drive you install the OS to and holds the boot mgr and a few other things. It's important that you do not try to avoid having it for this very reason.

When you install or reinstall your OS, choose the drive you install on, hit the options button, then press delete. The drive will show up as unpartitioned disk space. Simply click it and press next. Allow Windows to create the partition on it's own, which includes the 100MB hidden partition, quick format, then install the OS.

 

[jwhite85]

Thanks for all your help. I was tipped off to a utility called EasyBCD and after running it and unhooking my XP drive I was able to boot to 7 without any problems. Thanks again.

 

[geekapproved]

Thanks for all your help. I was tipped off to a utility called EasyBCD and after running it and unhooking my XP drive I was able to boot to 7 without any problems. Thanks again.

I guess the Windows repair utility was too much for you? LOL