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Drive1 XP & boot loader,Drive2 win7- Drive1 crashed,fixable?

Drive1 XP & boot loader,Drive2 win7- Drive1 crashed,fixable?

Postby winst8r » Sat Oct 24, 2009 12:48 am

I have a system with 2 hard drives. On the first hard drive ("C") I had XP installed, with the ntldr on that drive. Then I installed windows 7. It replaced the startup stuff on drive C, but the installation directory was on the other drive, drive D.

So, basically winxp and the boot loader on one drive, win 7 on the other.

Then the XP drive failed, and now i need to get all the boot files onto the windows 7 drive from scratch.

I'm having difficulty finding good instructions on starting from scratch in this scenario. Any help is appreciated. :)
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Re: Drive1 XP & boot loader,Drive2 win7- Drive1 crashed,fixable?

Postby Grav!ty » Sat Oct 24, 2009 3:50 am

With your Windows 7 drive connected, booted to the Windows 7 DVD and at the install now setup screen, select Repair your computer at the bottom left. From the menu that appears, again select Startup repair.

You may need to reboot and do this again if don't boot directly to Win 7 after startup, as Startup repair sometimes copies the boot files to the drive and needs a second pass to configure them.
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Re: Drive1 XP & boot loader,Drive2 win7- Drive1 crashed,fixable?

Postby winst8r » Sat Oct 24, 2009 4:27 am

looking at the diagnostics after the first scan, i see that at the very top of the diagnostics it says "windows directory = " and its just blank. it clearly doesnt know where the windows directory is. I tell it to finish anyways, and pull the cd from the drive for the reboot.

it says i need to insert a boot device. clearly the HD wasnt changed, assumably because it did not even detect that windows is installed on the drive. (note however that I can get to the command prompt and poke around the drive from the windows 7 CD, so i know the HD is functioning)

no matter how many times i attempt the startup repair it makes no changes.

another thing i should mention:
when i first click on repair, it brings up the dialog "system recovery options" with 2 radio buttons: "use recovery tools ..." or "restore your computer ...". Below "use recovery tools ..." is an empty table where one of the headings is "operating system". there are no entries in the tabel, which informs me that it isnt detecting any operating systems still.
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Re: Drive1 XP & boot loader,Drive2 win7- Drive1 crashed,fixable?

Postby Grav!ty » Sat Oct 24, 2009 4:34 am

Please post a screenshot of your disk management. Just use the upload attachment button when you post a reply. I'm wondering if there's a hidden system partition.

Also, check to see if your Windows 7 drive is set to be your first boot HDD in your BIOS.

You can also try copying the file bootmgr and the folder Boot from your DVD and copy them to the root of your Windows 7 drive, i.e. not in any folder at all but on the root of drive.
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Re: Drive1 XP & boot loader,Drive2 win7- Drive1 crashed,fixable?

Postby winst8r » Sat Oct 24, 2009 5:12 pm

I cannot get into disk management, because it doesnt boot into windows.

There is probably not a hidden system partition - that partition probably was lost along with the first drive.

Yes, the HDD shows in the bios and is set to boot from it.

Copying the bootmgr and the boot directory off the windows DVD had no effect, it still doesnt boot.

Thanks for your help so far, Grav
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Re: Drive1 XP & boot loader,Drive2 win7- Drive1 crashed,fixable?

Postby Grav!ty » Sun Oct 25, 2009 2:12 am

OK, I'm a little confused. You're obviously booting to the system to be able run diagnostics. You can post a screenshot of disk management from whatever OS you're booting to, it will will provide the same info and then please indicate what OS is on which drive/partition.
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Re: Drive1 XP & boot loader,Drive2 win7- Drive1 crashed,fixable?

Postby winst8r » Sun Oct 25, 2009 8:52 am

I'm booting into the windows 7 DVD, where it asks me to either install or repair. when you say a screenshot of disk management, are you asking me to take a picture with my digital camera of what it says when i tell it to repair? I am not booting any OS, just the windows 7 DVD.

there is currently a drive with the windows 7 folder on it, etc. that is the only drive/partition on the system. that special hidden windows 7 partition was likely lost in the hard drive crash, along with the normal boot manager files.
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Re: Drive1 XP & boot loader,Drive2 win7- Drive1 crashed,fixable?

Postby Grav!ty » Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:06 am

OK got it. I thought when you said "looking at the diagnostics after the first scan" you meant running the diagnostics of VistaBootPRO.

Quite honestly, I have no further suggestions for you. You can wait for others to see if they can help but in your position I would have reinstalled a long time ago.

Would you like to install to a separate new partition on that drive to see if you can pull any data and stuff you want to keep off that drive before reinstalling from scratch? Let me know and I'll guide you to create a new smallish partition you can install to for that purpose. It takes about 20 minutes for an install. Sorry, can't think of anything else :eek:
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