Win 7 hangs on load up after reattaching my 2nd sata drive


  1. Posts : 3
    win 7 home 64 bit premium
       #1

    Win 7 hangs on load up after reattaching my 2nd sata drive


    My main sata drive crashed and I went and replaced it. I installed the new drive and then loaded win 7 premium 64 bit home. Once windows was re-installed and completely updated, I reattached my 2nd sata hard drive. When I start the computer, windows goes to the black screen showing the windows icon and it says starting windows but it does not go anywhere from there.

    My bios shows the new hhd as my boot drive and shows my old one as the secondary drive. My boot hdd is in sata port 1 and my 2nd hdd is in port 2. I am not sure what to do.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 3
    win 7 home 64 bit premium
    Thread Starter
       #2

    When I add this drive to a usb converter to treat it as a portable drive, it will load the drivers and register that it is connected but it does not show on "my computer" as a drive that can be accessed.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 6,292
    Windows 7 64 Bit Home Premium SP1
       #3

    Most likely your old HDD has Windows on it and is still marked ACTIVE.

    Your system can only load one OS and it must choose between the two ACTIVE drives. This can cause startup delay.
    Once in Windows the system will ignore the partition containing the other operating system. If the entire drive is the C: drive then it will ignore the entire drive in Windows Explorer & My Computer.
    You should still be able to see the drive in Disk Management if it is seen in BIOS/UEFI.

    If the above proves true then the solution is to remove the ACTIVE flag from the drive.
    See here:
    Partition - Mark as Inactive
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 3
    win 7 home 64 bit premium
    Thread Starter
       #4

    The C:/ drive is a dead drive and that was removed from the equation. The secondary drive which was the E:/ drive is the one that I am referring to. It never had an operating system on it, it was used only for extra room. I have tried adding the E:/ drive to my system as well and mine hangs the same way and I unhooked my secondary drive to test it.

    I put in my win 7 installation disk and tried to go in to mark the partition as inactive but it hangs up in about the same place almost. The cd loads window drivers, then the screen goes black saying "starting windows" then it stays black and I get the mouse icon which I can move around but nothing else appears like it should. When I run the win 7 cd without the E:/ drive hooked it up, it runs as normal and I can do the steps listed in the post you linked.

    Here is exactly what happened and maybe someone has some insight on why both drives went bad.

    My wife was working on digital scrap booking when her mouse stopped moving. She gave it a minute and nothing so she hit control-alt-delete but nothing happened there either. She held down the power button to do a hard shut down and it took longer than normal to shut down. She restarted her computer and it hung up on the loading screen. I tested it a couple of times and same thing. I got out the win 7 cd to do a windows repair thinking that the boot loader had an error in there.

    Once the cd was loaded, I chose repair windows. Two hours later it was still running. I let it run all night and it was still in the same place as when I went to bed. I let it run all day until I got home from work and it was still in the same place. I am not sure the exact phrase but something like examining windows. I then removed the drive and tried it in my computer. Our computers are identical as I built them at the same time. It hung up at the loading screen on mine as well so I figured the drive was shot and bought a new one.

    I installed the new one and then installed and completely updated win 7 home premium 64 bit. The only other thing that I installed was Norton 360. I then shut down and hooked up the E:/ drive (it registered on bios and was not the primary boot drive but was listed to boot after the C:/ drive and DVD-ROM) and it hung up at loading. I removed it and tried it as my E:/ drive and it hung up at loading on mine while hers started right up without it. I removed it from mine and mine started right up. I then got out my USB kit so I could hook it up as a USB drive. At first it did not register and only the power light was on. I then disconnected the usb from the computer but let the drive plugged into the power. I then plugged the USB cable back in and the SATA light appeared on the USB kit and the drive showed up. It will not let me open it though, it cause win explorer to hang up as it tries to read the contents of the drive.

    Does this sound familiar to anyone? I had up to date virus protection running when it happened and I don't think that there was any power surge because all other computer equipment is working just fine. I guess I am going to have to send the drive in to have the information removed because my wife isn't the best about backing up her drive and she had added a lot of pictures and other important things on to the drive that she is in tears over possibly losing.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 6,292
    Windows 7 64 Bit Home Premium SP1
       #5

    It sounds like the second (E) drive has failed. Particularly since it hangs both PCs.

    You can try connecting it with a new SATA cable, try a different SATA power connector - see if that changes anything.

    Otherwise, see if you can download the hard drive diagnostic program from the manufacturer's website. You will need one that is on a bootable CD or USB stick so you can test the bad drive without booting into windows.
    See what the test says and let us know.
      My Computer


 

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