Windows 7 - Can't get passed "Boot from CD"

Hi guys,

I recently sold a hard drive and wanted to use the Windows 7 installation CD to format it. I booted from the CD-ROM, it booted all the appropriate files and I proceeded to a custom install where I can add/remove partitions/format etc.

The drive I was formatting was a secondary, please remember that.

Anyways I did my business, took the CD out and booted from the main drive but now it keeps asking me for the boot CD to install Windows because it is referencing the files from the above task. My main drive has Windows 7 on it.

I can't get around it, I tried to go into the CD and run a repair ...

How the heck can I get past this and back to my Windows 7!!!!!

How did you format a drive you recently sold? Do you mean you sold it but you still have it?

I assume you didn't unplug your main drive before attempting to install Windows 7 on the secondary drive?

I sold the drive and was ready to ship it but I wanted to format the drive first.

I didn't unplug my main drive and I am assuming that the Windows 7 install disc installed the installation files on my main drive which it then creates a separate drive (X: I believe) to put the installation files on.

I think it is taking those files now and not looking at C:\ where my current Windows 7 installation is.

What can I do now?

I'm not sure why you installed Windows 7 on a hard disk that you're going to ship to someone. It is not going to work on someone else's computer. Unless their computer is exactly like yours, they will need to reformat it.

Windows setup doesn't create another drive/partition on hard disk all by itself. It makes a RAM disk.

Unplug the drive that you want to format, insert the windows 7 dvd and do a repair install....

Brinks Tutorial --==> HERE

and you don't need to boot from the DVD to format a disk. Just format it from within Windows. Right-click on the drive letter and go Format.

P.S. - formatting a drive doesn't erase any data. If you're trying to erase the disk you need to use a different method. Such as the cipher /w:<drive_letter>: command inside Windows. Or a third party tool like Eraser.

Ok, I was afraid that this would happen. Confusion has set in. Let me try explaining again.

I have two hard drives.

Hard drive 1 : Has my current Windows 7 32-Bit running wonderfully, and it is the main drive

Hard drive 2 : Was empty but I wanted to format it to be sure, I was never installing Windows 7 on it, I was merely using the partitioning/format tool.

I put my Windows 7 DVD in the drive and booted from it. It went through the normal loading files screen. I then did a custom setup and did what I needed to do to drive 2. I then shutdown the computer unplugged drive 2 and removed it from the system.

I then booted up the machine and it thinks I still want to install Windows 7. I don't because it is already on the drive that it is in there. I used to be able to do this no problem. I just wanted to boot from C: that already has Windows 7 running fine on it.

Tried that. And I tried it through the "Manage" section of Computer as well, under Disk Management, but it would not format the drive and it was greyed out from the menu, for some reason.

Grab a copy of Ubuntu, run it in live mode and format the offending drive using gparted... then do the repair install ...problem solved ... this isnt a difficult problem to solve...

If the option was grayed out, it probably means you hadn't created a partition. You can't format unallocated space.

At this point I think you will need to go with Tews' solution. Because for some reason it seems your installation got hosed which should not have happened just by using the format utilities on the Windows 7 DVD.