Windows 7 System Partition

The Q

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Jan 9, 2011
I have little knowledge when it comes to changing hardware, just putting that out there.


Back when 7 was released as an RC, I had it installed on my secondary office computer on it's original 40 GB sata drive. When I got the full version when it was released, I decided to add another drive (a 300 gb ata), and installed 7 on that. Now, I want to swap out the 40 gb sata drive with a brand new 500GB sata drive. When I do, my system will not boot. The crappy monitor i use shifts the text from the BIOS, but i'm guessing it's telling me that the system partition cannot be found. That drive is completely empty (as far as i know), but it must be connected for windows to boot. SOOO. Who can correct my ignorance, and right my wrong? How can tell my BIOS(or whatever dictates it) that the ata drive is the system partition, and that I don't need the old 40 gb?
 
The problem is that your boot information is on your old drive. Boot from the Windows 7 install disk and run a startup repair - this will write the boot information to your Windows 7 drive.
 
The problem is that your boot information is on your old drive. Boot from the Windows 7 install disk and run a startup repair - this will write the boot information to your Windows 7 drive.
I can confirm what patcooke was saying. I did the exact same thing (with getting the same errors), but when I tried to boot with the install disk, it worked. Hope everything works!
 
The only problem with doing the startup repair is Windows 7 really needs a active partition to do that repair. It might work, by may take a LOT of time to get there.

If you can boot normally, perhaps post a picture of your disk management window using the snipping tool. You may have to make the partition on the large drive active, if it does not already have one.

And you may need to run the startup repair several times.
 
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The only problem with doing the startup repair is Windows 7 really needs a active partition to do that repair.
Deal with that by going to control panel and marking the partition which is to be used as the active one before removing the old drive and running the startup repair.
 
And here I was looking for an easy solution.

After marking the new drive as active, and running the repair 50,000 times, I got it to boot 7 from the new drive. WOOO.

Cheers!
 
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