Windows 7 Wont Boot

onefstsnake

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Joined

Nov 20, 2007

Location

Fburg, VA

• Oct 28, 2009

• #1

Well I installed Windows 7 home oem on my new rig and everything went perfect. Restarted a few times for updates etc.

I have Win7 installed on my 640gb HD, I also have all my movies on a 1tb HD.

Now windows wont boot if the 1tb drive is not connected.

I went into the bios and made the 640 the primary boot disc. Still wont boot.
Says, "Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Press Enter"

Now if I connect the 1tb drive it boots fine. There is nothing windows related on the 1tb drive, just movies.
Ive tried swapping SATA ports, cables, even disconnecting everything but the 640 drive.

 

Last edited: Oct 28, 2009

hokiealumnus

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Joined

Oct 14, 2007

• Oct 28, 2009

• #2

It sounds like Windows has unwisely chosen to put its little 100M boot partition on the 1tb drive for some reason. Try unplugging the 1tb drive and running a repair install from the disc. Hopefully that will correct the problem.

 

X0d1@k

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Joined

Mar 27, 2003

Location

Drano(Reno), NV

• Oct 28, 2009

• #3

I just happened to have skimmed this article, might be of interest. It seems to be a different problem, or not?

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139991/Windows_7_endless_reboot_answer_evades_Microsoft

Looks like im going to wait till Win 7 goes SP1....2?

At least Microsoft is consistent.

 

OP

onefstsnake

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Nov 20, 2007

Location

Fburg, VA

• Oct 28, 2009

• Thread Starter
• #4

Thanks I will try that.

 

hokiealumnus

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Oct 14, 2007

• Oct 28, 2009

• #5

X0d1@k said:

I just happened to have skimmed this article, might be of interest. It seems to be a different problem, or not?

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139991/Windows_7_endless_reboot_answer_evades_Microsoft

Looks like im going to wait till Win 7 goes SP1....2?

At least Microsoft is consistent.

Click to expand...

Yes, it's a different problem. The people referenced were upgrading Vista and not performing clean installs. There is a very good reason we always recommend people backup their files and perform a clean install.

 

OP

onefstsnake

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Nov 20, 2007

Location

Fburg, VA

• Oct 28, 2009

• Thread Starter
• #6

Well I reinstalled windows and that seemed to work.

Thanks!

 

gvguy39

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Dec 31, 2008

Location

Columbus OH

• Oct 28, 2009

• #7

I definitely 2nd the clean (or custom as Microsoft calls it) install.

 

OP

onefstsnake

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Joined

Nov 20, 2007

Location

Fburg, VA

• Oct 28, 2009

• Thread Starter
• #8

I did a clean install and for some reason it put some files onto a second drive causing it not to boot properly.

All is well now.

 

A

Ashura

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Joined

Oct 4, 2003

Location

NYC

• Nov 9, 2009

• #9

Hey guys, I'm having the same issue. I installed Windows 7 onto a system with two hard drives, one OS and one not, and when the not-OS drive is unplugged I get a disk boot failure error.

I know clean install with no extra drives attached works, but is there any way to fix this without reinstalling the OS? Google pointed me towards using the installation disc's command prompt and "bootsect /nt60 c: /mbr" but that didn't work.

 

hokiealumnus

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Joined

Oct 14, 2007

• Nov 9, 2009

• #10

I actually just asked about this and was pointed to the answer here. Haven't had time to try it yet. I can confirm it doesn't work (at least the file move) from within Win7 because it's so well hidden. Will have to do it from another OS or WinPE boot disc.