Windows7 Boot Problem

PiE

Hi guys,

I'm selling my PC to a friend on Thursday.

Before giving it away, I wanted to install a new HDD and a fresh copy of W7, as I needed to keep my current data.

As I don't have a DVD drive, I used an ISO to install it.

I did this by putting both HDD's (Samsung Spinpoint F3 SATAs) into the PC and installing it to the new HDD from my current W7 install.

When I boot up with both drives installed, I can choose the new install or my old one with no problems.

When I remove my old drive and try to boot with just the new drive & the fresh W7 install, it says "disk boot failure, please insert system disk".

The BIOS sees the new drive on boot, it knows it's there. It just appears that something is missing from the drive to make it boot.

Any way I fix this quickly (without a DVD drive!)?

Thanks in advance.

Capt'n Midnight

the computer would be booting from the first drive it sees, in this case the old drive


you might be able to do a repair but you'd need to have the new drive as the primary drive in the machine and almost certainly need some other boot device, like USB

Odaise Gaelach

The bootmanager is stored on the same drive as your current Windows 7 install. This shows the menu whereby you can choose which install of Windows you want to start. When you take the drive away, you take the bootmanager, and so the computer doesn't know what to do when it starts.

To remedy this you need to boot to the Windows 7 install. If you don't have a DVD drive then you can place a copy of Windows 7 into a USB key. Remember to backup all the data from the USB key before doing this!

Use a USB Key to Install Windows 7—Even on a Netbook - Microsoft Technet

When you've prepared the USB key remove the drives you want to keep and start the computer with the USB key plugged in.

When Windows setup has started and you've selected your language settings, click on Repair your computer.

From here you can use Bootrec.exe to repair the bootloader in your computer. Follow the instructions in the Microsoft Help and Support article below.

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows

Let us know how you get on.

PiE

Thanks for the help guys. That's what I thought the problem might be but I wasn't sure how to phrase it in a Google search to filter out the millions of similar queries.

Will give that remedy a go later today, thanks Odaise.