Help! I'm Stuck Can't Boot my Windows 7 Laptop

Hello,

I did a clean install of Windows 7 ultimate 32-bit on my laptop. It booted well and I thought of changing the harddrive letters. After shutdown the laptop could not load windows again. Going through the process to revive it I found out that the harddrive order changed making the back up drive to be drive C:. I am now stuck and cannot find a way around this.
Kindly help as I have data which I had already moved back & i wouldn't want to lose it.

Thank you.

Monsbob.

Startup Repair

If you have a External HD, you could copy & paste your data.
Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console



Note: You may need to do startup repair 3 to 4 times.
Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

@Bill2.. I had tried it earlier took a long time but without success. @Theog.. I am running the startup repair again.
Thank you all.

If startup repair doesnt work, try bootrec.

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows

@Bill2.. I had tried bootrec earlier but it doesn't hurt to try again with the guidance of the page. I'll Keep you posted.
It hasn't finished the startup repair. Thank you sir.

After changing the drive letters, did you change the BIOS boot order? If you did, change it back to what it was originally before you messed with the drive letters. How did you change the drive letters and why? Normally windows won't let you change the drive letter of the drive/partition it's installed too, so changing drive letters won't normally prevent you from booting up into windows.

@Alphanumeric i didn't change anything else. Actually I didn't change drive C:. I was changing the DVD drive and the backUp drive as the DVD was appearing before the backup & I normally prefer it the other way. I do not know how the backup took the palce of the OS drive.

@Theog.. I have tried the startup repair 5 times without success.
@Bill2.. trying the bootrec process is not successful as when I input 'bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup' it says
'The store export operation has failed.
The system cannot find the file specified.'
Anyone please help!

Can you get into safe mode by any chance? You could then try this.

Need to change a drive letter from outside the OS

Otherwise, if you have a win7 install dvd or a system repair disk, you can use diskpart to check whether the windows partition is active and if not mark it active.

Partition - Mark as Active

Alternatively you can use the same diskpart to change drive letters. (be careful)

Hiding or Changing your Drive Letter using DISKPART