Windows 7 won't boot!
Posted on Mon 01 August 2011 in blog
Well in a nutshell, here's how this problem unfolded, and came to be corrected.
New Install
I bought a pair of 1TB drives, and set them up in a RAID 1 array, using the
VT8237A southbridge's built-in RAID feature. I left my old 200GB PATA drive
in place, so I could copy my files to the array. Then, I installed Windows 7 on
the array, and everything was great. Until I happened to notice (while cleaning
up) a new file: bootmgr
on the old drive. A quick Google search told me that
this was the Vista/7 bootloader. Crap! The brilliant installer decided to put
the Win7 install on the new RAID array, where I specified, but put the
bootloader on the old drive!
Steps:
- Unhook old drive, which renders system unbootable.
- Boot up Win 7 setup DVD, and select Repair (not install).
- Choose command prompt.
From Command prompt:
- diskpart
- list disk
- select disk 0
- list partition
- select partition 1
- active
- exit
(This marks the partition as active, which it was not before. This is required for the BIOS to see it as bootable.)
Next, need to fix boot sector:
bootrec /FixMbr
bootrec /FixBoot
bootrec /RebuildBcd
Then, close command prompt, and choose startup repair. It may take once
through for it to say fixed an error, then reboot. Then go back to startup
repair. Here you should be able to run the automatic startup repair, and it
will tell you that BOOTMGR
was missing, which it will correct.