Windows 7: Removed my Vista hard drive, now Windows 7 won't Boot?

Hey everyone. I obtained a student copy of Windows 7 back in October like many of us did, and like many of us, I installed as a clean install, not an upgrade. Or so I thought.

I was running Windows 7 for months before I decided to finally remove the Vista harddrive (I installed Windows 7 on the Intel 80GB X25M.) Apparently, when I removed the drive, I wasn't able to boot into Windows 7. Now I thought I had done a clean install of Windows 7.



I think I should mention that during bootup, my Bios gives me two OS's to choose from, and they both say Windows 7. But, only one actually worked. The second choice would just bring me back to my Bios rebooting and brought me back to the OS choice screen.

So for now, I have reconnected my Vista harddrive so I am able to use my install of Windows 7.

Why would this happen if I did a clean install (installed by burning the upgrade setup to the DVD, then onto a clean new drive, and activated it successfully.) And why would it show my two Windows 7 choices at bootup?

I hope you guys can answer these questions for me. Can't seem to understand what went wrong.

Please post back a screenshot of your full Disk Management drive map with listings, using Snipping Tool in Start Menu, attach file using paper clip in Reply box. Label or explain the drive contents.

Then we can advise you the exact steps.

You likely have a Dual Boot which needs the MBR recovered into 7 - we help do it every day here.

You might get lucky with a system restore disk that will fix this for you but probably not.

Windows 7 probably modified the Vista boot loader on the Vista drive rather than make its own on the Windows 7 hard drive. What that means is that if you take Vista away, there is mo instructions to point your computer to Windows 7. There are programs like EasyBCD (you will have to plug your Vista back in and install it on that) that can modify the boot loaders, but I cannot remember if they will create one for you that you can put on the other hard drive.

Thanks for the response. Here is a snapshot disk management. The C: drive is my boot drive (the Intel) E: is my Vista drive and D: is just for storage.


Can you point me to info that may help me through this process? I am not familiar with this program or boot loaders or how they can be modified. Thanks.

Unplug Vista HD, plug cable into Windows 7 or else change BIOS to boot Windows 7 HD first, after DVD drive.

Now boot Windows 7 DVD or Repair CD, press Shift F10 to open Command Line, type:

DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK 1 (confirm this is Windows 7 HD # from list)
LIST PARTITION
SELECT PARTITION 1 (confirm this is Windows 7 partition # from list)
ACTIVE
EXIT

Now return to booted Windows 7 DVD Repair console or Repair CD, click through to Recovery Tools list to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots to write the MBR to Windows 7.

If you plug Vista HD back in now, it will be bootable via BIOS using the key given on first bootup screen for Boot Menu. To delete Vista from HD, use DISKPART "Clean All" command for deepest clean, or "Clean" for short clean.

Thanks for the step by step process. I'll try it once I get a chance. My schedule is pretty hectic atm.

1) Download SIW2 Tool sispar to your desktop, from here.
NTLDR is Missing

2) Unzip download.
You can download 7zip from here,
Download

3) Open folder, Right Click and run as admin on sispar.cmd.

4) Press enter

5) Enter the drive letter you want for the NEW system partition (must be a Primary partition with 7 on it)

6) If you want to include all your current boot menu items (assuming you have more than one) type Y when it asks, if you only want the boot menu entry for the New system partition, type N.

It takes about 3-5 seconds.
That's it.
If the NEW system partition is on the first HD in boot order - it will show as "system" in Disk management on next restart. If you have more than one HD - obviously, on restart go into bios and set the HD containing the NEW system partition first in bios boot order.

This put the boot files need on to the Windows 7 HD/partition.