Primary-master drive identify error!

I just ran system mechanic pro 9 on my windows 7 machine and the program said that it needed to reboot in order to complete. My computer has been 'rebooting' now for over 2 hours and all I have on the screen is text describing FreeDOS kernel build and part way down the screen it says: 'Primary-master drive identify error! No disk to use: QDMA not loaded!' Obviously I am posting this from another computer. I don't know if this is an actual error or if SM9 is doing something in the background.

I haven't powered down the machine to restart it because I can hear the drive running and I don't know what it is doing. Does anyone have any advice?!?! The keyboard doesn't seem to respond. There is an external hard drive connected via USB, so I am afraid that whatever System Mechanic did the reboot is now looking at that drive instead of the hard drive in my laptop. I could try unplugging the USB and powering down the computer, but as I said that makes me nervous. I contacted iolo (the System Mechanic company) but of course their support isn't available on the weekends and they will get to my support request when they can. So far I'm not impressed with them.

Quick google search tells me that SM9 is a PC optimizer/registry cleaner. It also tells me that the software has done serious damage to other peoples computers, some of which required a clean install to fix.

Do you have a Windows 7 install disc? We may be able to try some repair options to get you going again without a drastic measure like a reinstall of 7.

I have a system recovery CD that I created not too long ago through windows and I have the Win 7 upgrade disk that I used to upgrade from XP.

Should I try unplugging the external drive and powering down the laptop and then restart it?

Power down the laptop first, then unplug the drive, and then restart, in that order.

Just tried it... no luck. So I restarted again and pressed F8 (nothing happened) so I tried again and pressed F9 and told it to boot from the laptop drive. It took me to the windows login (farther than I got before). Very, very slowly my desktop is starting to appear. I'll post again in a few minutes to let you know if it worked... think happy thoughts.

With some minor errors found so far (had to start each Office program and Adobe Reader individually so that the programs could configure themselves and re-associate the files on my computer with the programs) it's running again. I even reconnected the external drive and restarted the computer. I still wouldn't recommend this product but if you find yourself in my situation try telling the computer which drive to boot from. Hopefully I won't find anymore surprises!

Hopefully not. Make sure to remove the software completely.

Never use System Mechanic. It's evil.

Thing about automated system repair is, the developers are assuming that they can program solutions for every possible environment and variable that comes along. Or to be fair, they assume they can catch any exception and prevent major errors. But you can't anticipate each and every environment you come across, and how it might be unique in ways you didn't predict.

Imagine if doctors had an automated bodily repair tool. Would you want to use it on yourself?