Windows 7 Windows 7 wont boot from HDD after x64 ultimate installation

TastyPineapples

New Member
Hi, after installing win7 ultimate on an additional HDD, neither of my windows 7 installations will boot anymore. XP does.

I was using windows 7 evaluation copy until yesterday, when I bought additional HDD and installed 64 bit Ultimate on it. No changes were made to the old HDD with win 7 evaluation installation. After installing the 64 bit Ultimate, my PC booted up normally and multiboot offered two choices, windows 7 and windows 7. Once I Had booted and loaded the Ultimate from the multiboot menu, I restarted my PC to check does the older installation still work. In this phase I removed the installation disk form the DVD drive as it wasn't needed anymore. But now neither of my HDDs wont boot up. It hangs on the black screen with memory checks, device listings and all that. The last line says "AMD Data change ........ " CMOS Reloaded - Succesfully"

I can boot from the win7 DVD and attempt the repair options. It says nothing to repair on the evaluation installation and for the ultimate it says " unable to repair this version of Windows"- even when it recognizes it and is installed form the same disk.

I quess that there is somethiong wrong with my BIOS??? :S Or then the boot sector is somehow corrutped from both installations. Is there a way to fix this?

Both of the windows 7s are installed on a SATA HDD. The old XP intallation on a IDE HDD does boot up.

I have changed booting orders from BIOS and primary HDD many many times already. I have tried different SATA couplings with my HDDs, set to master and slaves etc.

No extra USB devices connected (mouse and keyboard)

Im using a AMD am3 motherboard with Phenom II 4x Processor

-Thank you already


EDIT: Yes I have managed to get into windows also ONCE, I just restarted my PC as soon as I got there.
 
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i seem to be having a similar problem with my copy of windows 7 home x64, however my boot just hangs after the windows animation thing so i can't log on, i've also got my version of windows on a SATA HDD.
I'm using a similar setup to you aswell with an X4 processor and an AM3 mobo.

I think my problem differs in the fact that i've managed to get onto my windows once to install drivers and get some updates.
 
Could you attach a picture of your disk management window. Use the one from XP if you can't get into Win 7.

Until then, there is only one partition the system will boot from and that is the first active partition encountered during boot. If the XP drive is primary (check bios), then the boot files from there are being used. If a partition says system on it in disk management, that is where the boot files need to be.

You might want to download and use EasyBCD to set up the boots. If you join their forum you can download the beta 2.0 version. From XP it does need .net framework installed, so you may want to wait until you get back into Win 7.
 
Both of the SATA HDDs have a System partition. XP HDD isn't connected at all, just tested with that.

Win 7 Install shows
"E: Local disk - Primary partition"
"E: Local disk - System partition"
"F: Win7Ultimate - System Partition"

Local disk and Win7Ultimate are the names of the HDDs. I have also tried using only one HDD connected at the time.

The XP HDD doesnt actually work becouse it has XP installed into an older PC and due that has hardware compatibility issues, but it does boot up normally.
 
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I am assuming you are looking at the partitions using XP?

If both drives have an active bootable partition, a strartup repair should allow Win 7 to boot. Leave the XP drive out. Whichever drive you have set as primary, and I assume you would want the RTM install to be, the startup repair will fix it. Or just take out all the drive except the Win 7 Ultimate.

If the startup repair cannot find the Win 7 install, make sure the partition is marked active. If you need to, do this with XP running. You can only make one partition per drive active. And you only need one active partition active in your system to hold the boot files.

Basically we need to get the Win 7 booting normally then we can fix the boot on the others.
 
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No these are the ones with win 7 install.

I have tried leaving all but the RTM HDD connceted.

Win 7 install disk recognizes both of my windows 7 installations. Nothing to repair as I stated before.
I can boot from the win7 DVD and attempt the repair options. It says nothing to repair on the evaluation installation and for the ultimate it says " unable to repair this version of Windows"- even when it recognizes it and is installed form the same disk.
One time it said at the repair post-report that there is a problem with the windows startup. I clicked next and it restarted my PC with no results. I havent seen this report anymore. Once the boot menu also said "DISK BOOT FAILURE -INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER" - both of the HDDs were connected.

The problem is to get the windows 7 to boot at all.
 
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Weird

As I came back home and started up my pc with only the RTM HDD connected, it actually gave me the multiboot menu :confused: It showed windows 7 three times! One of them works.
I made a system restore point as I can acces them form system repair. Now Im going to use the system restore cmd prompt to fix my boot sector

I suppose these should do the trick:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot

Now I am wondering what should I do to the 2 extra non-working windows boots it shows on the multiboot menu ( there is only one installed on this HDD)
msconfig show all 3 them also.

boot..png
 
If you want to know which one is which, open an administrative command prompt and type:

bcdedit

This will list the BCD strore entries and show where they are pointing( C: or D: or etc). You can post a picture of those, or see if you can tell which ones might need deleting or altering.

Since you are in Win 7 you can now download and use the EasyBCD utility to set up the boot. Make sure you register and use the 2.0 beta. It will also fix the other boot manager problems, but you need to know where the Win 7 installs are.
 
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