Windows 7 unable to boot

[grither]

Hi gang, im very desparate!

Had a great runnng win7 system earlier today. I noticed that one of my usb external hard drives wasnt being recognized by windows. I fiddled with the usb connections and it connected. Then i tried to check out another drive which was attached and the drive would only partially read, ie could access some files but not access others

Went into windows, manage, disk manager and noticed that this second drive said something like mbr not set or something like that. Neither of these drives are my boot drive ie c drive

Tried to reboot and windows hangs at 'starting windows'. If i try to go to safe mode and choose windows repair it runs for awhile but then says unable to repair

When trying to boot to safe mode im unable tomuse my mouse or keyboard so im unable to do anything. Note that mouse is wireless but keyboard is usb wired

Will try and get a wired mouse from work tomorrow but any suggestions!!!?!?

 

[CaedenV]

unplug the USB devices (other than mouse and keyboard). Most likely one of the drives has a bad USB controller and is wreaking havoc on Windows. Unpluging the bad device should fix things. Also, make sure BIOS is set to boot from the local HDD first, and not the USB device.

 

[grither]

Thanks for the reply. I forgot to mention that i had unplugged both drives before booting. Any other help? I do have other usb devices attached... I guess i could try to unplug all but the keyboard and mouse?

 

[grither]

ok wow. after leaving computer off overnight, i pulled the power plug for about 20 this am. then booted up totally fine, just as before, all drives working

will be running a thorough virus scan but feels like i should be doing something else too... any suggestions for what i should check?

 

[shanky887614]

i believe you must have messed with mbr


you only need an mbr on system partition

delete it off other drives this can stop windows working


mbr is masterboot record

bassically you should only have 1 mbr


read here for more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record


i suggest you read through that.


if you dont know what something is e.g. mbr then dont do anything till you have researched it or asked someone in the know

 

[grither]

hi there, thanks so much for your reply. i also think it might have been a mbr problem, i sort of recall when i got the other drives working and recognized, that in the windows disk management area i think for a brief period at least there 2 drivers showing with an MBR. maybe this confused the boot process

i have no idea how this got resolved. when i successfully booted this am, i thought i had disconnected the suspect drives, but upon boot realized that in fact they were plugged in and recognized!

i must have tried booting at least 15 times last night, then the first one of the morning worked right off. of course, i haven't shut down and rebooted yet because i'm too afraid!!! kidding (sort of) but will try tonight