Windows 7: Dual disk system booting with incorrect drive letters

Here is what I did:

1) Installed Windows 7 Ultimate on a new system with two physical disk drives (c: is an SSD, d: is standard disk)

2) While installing, used SYSPREP to move Users and ProgramData to d:\



3) Pulled the D:\ drive to copy info on it from the system I am replacing

4) MISTAKENLY booted the system and attempted to log in. Got an error (Userprofile was on the missing drive) and shut down. NOTE: Login Picture was missing.

5) Replaced the d: drive.

6) When I boot, I see my profile pic, but I get the error "The user profile services service failed the logon"

7) I had not yet created a second account or enabled the admin account.

8) Opened Repair. In the dos prompt, I see that the boot drive is now "E:\" and the data drive is coming up as c:\ (d:\ = temp and e:\ = DVD for the repair).

9) I tried to restore, but cannot locate a restore point (I know one was created by an install process just before I pulled the drive).

Any ideas? I haven't even created the Admin account in the Repair because I am afraid it will be created with the wrong drive references.

Take a look at this Tutorial:
SSD - Install and Transfer the Operating System
SSD Tweaks and Optimizations in Windows 7
SSD Alignment
SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation


Can you post a screen shot of Disk management?
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Hello Ultralame,

You might see if this may be able to help with the user profile error.

The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded. - Vista Forums

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thank you for those links, and thanks for the Alignment info. I have done a lot of research on the SSDs, and I had not seen that yet (annoying!). This explains why I have so much better performance after a clean install rather than a clone (that was a while ago though).

Update for this...

When I initially booted from the install disk and chose Restore from the DIALOG that popped up, it did not find any restore points.

So then I entered the repair section and ran a startup repair. This did not help.

So I went back to the Setup DVD and entered the repair (bypassed Restore choice) and loaded a CMD window to look around (I made no changes).

Then I ran the restore from the list of repair choices, and this found by restore points. I ran back the last restore before my problems and it appears that I am back up and running.

Thanks Brink/Shawn. I saw that, and since I only had the one profile created the new install was going to be my backup; but the problems I had scare me; if I ever boot without the D: drive, I may lose my ability to log in, as the drive letters may get screwed up (they might get screwed up now!).

I'll look into this, but for the moment I am back up and running.

That is good news.

Hello.


You may care to have a look at this tutorial at the link below, especially Method Two.

System Restore Point : Create at System Startup

Thanks. That's a pretty good idea- but isn't there a way to do this without the task scheduler? Seems like this is something that Windows should be doing anyway.

Hello again.


Windows is "supposed" to auto-create SR points on a regular basis but those of us (speaking mostly for myself) that have had a play with SR a lot haven't been able to determine what that specific schedule is supposed to be.

The Windows Task Scheduler is what Windows 7 supposedly uses to create SR points but as you can see it says the "last run" completed successfully though there is no corresponding SR point listed, only the ones created by the task I set to run every day at 5:00 PM.

click to enlarge