Dual boot hdd failed win 7 wont boot

What does it say when you try to boot? Insert system disk? Have you checked the device boot order in BIOS?

It doesn't say anything, Cursor hangs in upper left corner. Boot order is correct

Like I said, I really think I originally set it up accidentally as a dual boot system and all the boot info was on the IDE drive with XP, which worked fine, until the IDE drive died. Now I have a SATA drive with Win 7 on it, all my software, settings etc, but no boot info.

I would much rather get this working without starting from scratch.

I just read this from another post

"If you install a Windows OS and there is a visible Windows install, the process will overwite the MBR on the existing drive and NOT write an MBR on your installation drive (assuming that it is a different drive)."

This confirms my suspicions that no boot info was put on my second drive when I installed Win 7.

So...

I just downloaded "Mini Tool Partition Wizard" , which is free, and am going to try and build/rebuild/fix (?) MBR.

Will post results

OK, that worked

It did it so fast I didn't think anything happened, but when I restarted my PC, presto, it booted right up

So, I fixed my own problem. What I thought the problem was turned out to be correct. If anyone else has the same problem, this should work for you.

This line I found was key:

"If you install a Windows OS and there is a visible Windows install, the process will overwite the MBR on the existing drive and NOT write an MBR on your installation drive (assuming that it is a different drive)."


So if you get rid of the other drive or reformat it to use for something else etc.. your Win 7 drive will not boot as it will not have an MBR. I don''t know if lot's of programs fix the MBR, but the free "Mini Tool Partition Wizard" worked great


Something else that goes along with this is more than likely, if you had the same thing happen to you, the drive letter will not be "C", and fixing that could be a pain

Just thinking aloud, but if I change it, all my software that points to it will have to be fixed and I might have to repair the MBR again, because when it boots, it will look for Win 7 at the old drive letter, I think.

Shouldn't be a big deal and if I mess it up I have a backup image, so I can change everything right back

Just had a thought that changing shortcuts to point to the right target & fixing MBR might not be all there is to it. If the registry entries all point to the old drive letter, then I would have to reinstall everything. I don't know anything about registries. I guess I could leave it be, but it seems funny to not have the boot drive be labeled "C"

I wonder if there is software that will do everything easy?

Maybe I should've just started over,maybe I will... but I have everything working so nice, all drivers updated etc

At the very least I got a good learning experience

best way to fix these problems is


grab a windows 7 disk (or xp)

click on repair install on win7



cmd prompt, enter:
BootRec.exe /fixmbr

you can also substitue the /fixmbr with thes commands:

/FixBoot. Writes a boot sector onto the system partition to start Windows

/ScanOs. Scans all disks for Windows installations and displays them to you.

/RebuildBcd. Scans all disks for Windows installations and prompts you to pick the ones you want to add to the BCD.