Windows 7: Hard drive failure after fresh install

Hello all,

I have just bought a brand new hard drive due to my last ones controller failed.

Western Digital Caviar Black 500gb

So the problem,

Did a fresh install of win 7 (Build 7229) two nights ago, all installed perfectly, next day (yesterday) went to boot up pc and had the dos error message - Disk boot failure, please insert system disk and press enter.

My first impression was it may have been an install failure, so i formatted the hard drive and reinstalled. shutdown the PC and rebooted up and i had the same error message, now after this, i got my failed hard drive out and after a lot of faffing around, BIOS found it and it gave me the same error message.

Can anyone tell me what the problem might be. I have tried Windows startup repair, did not fix.

BIOS settings are

First boot device is Hard drive
second boot device is CD-ROM
(I have even swapped these around to boot from windows 7 and it just starts the setup procedure of installing windows drivers)

I have even set boot order of HDDs so my main windows HDD is up top.

Anyone got any clues.

I will be flashing my BIOS tonight, but has anyone got an idea of what is happening.

Thanks in advance

Try another copy of the OS and again perform fresh install, remember to format the HDD. You could also boot the DVD and try repair?

Sounds like you will have to run the Windows installation again anyways. Usually when you boot with the install CD, you get the "press a key to boot from CD", if you don't get that then it means you either don't have a boot sector on your hard drive or the hard drive is not in the boot list in the BIOS.

In any case, when Windows installs and reboots for the first time, leave the CD in the drive and do not press a key to boot from CD, it should then boot to hard drive and continue installation

Luckystar, if I understand you well you installed without any problem (meaning the DVD is probably good) and in sequence the HDD showed a failure, refused to boot (which could be a hardware problem). And that is after you just replaced it because of another apparent HDD failure.
Can it be your Motherboard has a problem? It would be sheer bad luck you have 2 bad HDD in sequence, although it happens.
One other question: what is teh BIOS setup for SATA?

Well, if thats the case, then why wont my other HDD boot, as that has a boot sector and everything, its just the controller.

I tried the DVD repair and that did not work. I don't even get the 'press a key to boot from disk' it just goes straight to install, although when i went to use the disk to repair, the sytem hanged (did not crash) and eventually the option list came up with 'Install now' 'repair windows installation'.

I am wondering if its down to the BIOS version, so i will be re-flashing tonight when i get home. I will also be building my mums new pc up, so i will see if it boots on that mobo. I know i will get a BSOD but i just need windows to boot.

SATA is in use and IDE seek is disabled as well as in the main section of BIOS. where it shows the HDDs and DVD drives installed. I just went to the IDE HDD and on both i selected none.

@ Luckystar,

I see in your specs that you are over-clocking CPU & memory. A lot of times this is bad for install of Windows 7. Also a lot members have better luck on install with only 2gb ram, Then add the additional ram back in later when everything is running smoothly. It will be worth a try to do these few corrections first & try install again. Best of luck.


" Doc "

To be honest, that is the furthest i have ever managed to overclock, i am running everything at stock speed, and i always use bare minimum hardware when installing as i had problems in the past with Vista ultimate.

I have two different boxes with Build 7229 x86 on them. No Problems, there. Did you install from DVD ? Burn .iso at 4x for best results ! Sometimes I pre-format my HD's with another computer or software before putting in the box I am going to install on with Windows 7. That seems to smooth over the install of the HD with Windows 7

This thread can now be closed, as i reinstalled windows 7 and this time it installed the reserve files, so back on track once again

Luckystar, please report as solved using the report button on the top right corner
Thanks for posting your results, +rep for that!