"Reboot and Select Proper Boot Device," etc. Error - Just Sometimes

Here's a screenshot from CrystalDisk of the hard drive in question.

Did you wipe the HD before install with Diskpart Clean Command? This solves many issues where old boot code interferes.

You should also be using the latest official installer ISO from Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which has SP1 to save hours of updating.

Is the flash stick formatted to be bootable? If so it could interfere so to use only for storage I'd move the data off and wipe it also with Clean command.

gregrocker said:

Did you wipe the HD before install with Diskpart Clean Command? This solves many issues where old boot code interferes.

No, I didn't. I've got the drive hooked up as USB now, and I am running diskpart clean all on it now.

gregrocker said:

You should also be using the latest official installer ISO from Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which has SP1 to save hours of updating.

I went ahead and burned a DVD of the latest official installer ISO of Windows 7 Home Premium X64, which I'll use with the product key on my tower.

gregrocker said:

Is the flash stick formatted to be bootable? If so it could interfere so to use only for storage I'd move the data off and wipe it also with Clean command.

Yes, it is. Do you recommend I use clean or clean all? Also, I also updated my BIOS earlier. On the HP page for my PC model, there was a BIOS update, so I installed it.

Sounds good so far. If you don't need the flash stick to boot then I'd wipe with Clean command which overwrites the boot sector that might be a problem here.

Watch the BIOS Boot order closely that HD remains set to boot first via F10, then boot the DVD using one time BIOS Boot Menu key which on most HP's is ESC or F9.

Thanks. I'll do more on the weekend, and report my experiences.

I've just finished doing two separate clean Windows 7 installations from the instructions listed here. One to the 750 GB Caviar Black drive I've had the error message with, and another one to a WD15EARS Caviar Green 1.5 TB drive. Both were done with the drives set to AHCI mode. Again, the 750 GB drive showed the "select boot device" error message on a couple of reboots, and the WD15EARS didn't show any at all, so I made a system image of the WD15EARS Windows 7 installation. On another forum, I read some other people have had the same trouble with WD Caviar Black drives and Intel series 3 chipsets, so I guess I'll chalk it up to incapability between this drive and my motherboard. I'm going to give the Caviar Black to a friend of mine who already has two Blacks in his PC, and continue using my WD15EARS and WD20EARS drives.

Your reply doesn't make clear if you were able to either install or reimage onto either HD.

If not did you try any of the troubleshooting steps before deciding this is the fault of the mobo?

We have a 100% install rate here if there is close cooperation and feedback. From what I can tell you tried nothing except booting the installer and doing the same thing again. There are many other steps you can try if you really want to get it installed.

As I said, I did clean installations of Windows 7 to both drives. The 750 GB still had the error message during some reboots, and the 1.5 TB didn't have any error messages. I followed the Windows 7 clean reinstall instructions to the letter. Both drives were wiped with the clean command. I've done everything requested of me in this thread.

Then it was a lack of feedback that made me unsure. We do not know what you've done unless you give feedback in real time.

I would test the 750 HD with the maker's diagnostics followed by Disk Check run from installer's Command Line on a full disk partition, using the tests in the note at the beginning of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot

We're going in circles here. As specified earlier, I have already run WD diagnostics on the 750. It passed. I've run Check Disk already, as I've stated. Both come back as no problems.