Windows 7 - Secondary Hard Drive freezes system before Windows launch

My system runs Windows 7, 64bit OS.
Replaced Socket 775 Mother board and CPU with Socket 1155.
ASUS was manufacturer of both old and new mobos.
Kept all hard drives and reinstalled them.
2 x Seagate 350Gb Sata 3.0 (one is the boot drive with OS)
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 1.0 Tb Sata 3.0


PROBLEM: System would freeze at post, just before Windows launch.
Isolated to the WD hard drive as problem.
When disconnected, Windows booted normally and all other drives appeared.


I did a “Clean Install” of Windows 7, 64 bit. I reinstalled latest mobo bios and all chipset/device drivers, but problem continued.


Tried to “Hot Plug” the WD drive after windows launched and it worked. It booted and loaded drivers. When Hot Plugged it operated normally and was visible in both My Computer and Disk Management. I could see files and transfer to and from the disk.


HOWEVER, when I shut down and restarted, I was back to square one. Drive caused system to freeze before Windows launch.


The only way to access the drive is via Hot Plug, which is not realistic for an internal drive.


Anyone have a solution? Help Please. Thanks.

Does the main drive and the WD drive both have the OS loaded on it? Next question: What SATA port do you have it plug into...it does make a difference? It should be plugged into sata ports 1 - 4. The other ports require either AHCI driver loaded to activate those ports or the RAID driver to use all port at the same time. It's a limation of the mobo do to the controller responseable for the remaining sata ports.

Haveing a look at your mobo manual, I see that is has 6 ports. 1 threw 4 are sata3g and ports 5-6 are sata6g. So make sure your have your hard drives plugged into one of the 3G ports. Here's a cut away of your mobo ports layout.

OS only loaded on main drive.
Plugged into Sata Port #2.
AHCI is enabled

Plug it into port 5-6 and check it. If not then disable AHCI, plug back into port 2 and see if that doesn't do the trick.

Note: Not sure if a re-install is required to disable AHCI after OS is loaded. A re-install is required to enable it if the OS is all ready installed. I found that out the hard way myself...with an ASUS mobo. Not sure for other brands of mobo's.

Also check your BIOS to check how your HDD's are setup to be used....either IDE, SATA or AHCI/RAID. For SATA, select SATA and they must be in plugged into sata ports 1-4.

Let's try a simple solution first - I have a nagging suspicion the WD disk contains weird bootcode in its MBR that's making the BIOS crash once it starts looking for bootable volumes.

Boot into the Windows rescue environment (or boot from your install DVD) and then hotplug your WD drive as you've been doing. Go to the command prompt by pressing Shift + F10 once the setup screen appears.

Now type "bootsect /nt60 /all /force" and press Enter. You should see various status messages indicating a successful bootcode update. At this point you're ready to close the command shell and restart your computer to Windows.

Is it now able to boot with the WD drive connected or does it still freeze up?

Solved… the hard way.
After trying everything from the simple ‘replace the sata cable’ to the more complex ‘Windows clean install’, nothing was working. Western Digital ‘support’ simply said the drive must not work with the motherboard I have?! ASUS suggested: Update drive firmware (no updates available); Try a larger power supply (already have 650W) and finally; Our motherboard must be defective – return it to CompUSA for a replacement (wasted my time with that one…).


Finally I came across something right here at SevenForums! On 10-16-2011 gregrocker posted a thread titled “Windows 7 – Frozen Bios Boot Screen”. Comments by TVeblen on 10-18 suggest that the hard drive has a controller chip that may get corrupted. Whether this is valid or not, the solution worked for me. Time consuming but painless.


I had to transfer all of the data off of the drive. I then ran Diskpart. I used the “Clean” command, which totally wipes the hard drive and apparently resets whatever has been corrupted.


When the “Clean” process was complete I had a drive that worked correctly again. I was able to shut down and restart without the system hanging at the Bios boot screen. Windows launched flawlessly.


Next I used Windows 7 Disk Management to partition and format the drive, assigning the original drive letters. Then I transferred all of my data back to the drive and everything is back to normal. I am in a happy place now.


Thanks for those who provided suggestions. Ultimately this forum did provide the answer.

Sorry Corazon, I missed your comments while I was going through the process I outlined. Seems the theory was correct about the corrupted boot code, but you have a much more direct fix. If it works it would have saved me hours of data transfers. Hopefully if someone else runs into this, they will see your comments and try the short route first.

I'm sorry you missed it too, as I was hoping to save you all the reinstallation work you ended up having.

It's still possible my solution wouldn't even have worked, but using diskpart and the clean command pretty much wipes out any MBR and partition table corruption by simply blanking it out completely. In other words, that was the best thing you could've done to make the HD usable.

I'm glad you're back in business now.