Windows won't boot unless I use a different drive

Okay this is a weird problem if I try to set the HDD that I use as the bootable drive in my BIOS all I get is a blinking cursor on a black screen. However if I plug in an old HDD with an old windows installation and set that as the bootable drive I get the boot selection screen and am able to boot into the windows installation on my original hard drive. Anyone know what could be causing this?

OK, see if I understand the conditions:

HD0 + HD1 = boot select for "old Win on HD0" or "new Win7 on HD1"
HD1 alone (now HD0) = no boot

You installed Win7 on HD1 when HD0 was installed. Boot record is on HD0 with Win7 on HD1.

You need to disconnect HD0 and use a Win7 installation CD to "repair" the boot sector on the previous HD1 (now HD0 because the original has been removed).

You might be able to use a partition manager program to make HD1 bootable, then remove HD0 and make HD1 > HD0...not sure if a free program can do it - Brink may know.

Regards,
GEWB

No actually I installed 7 on HD1 with only it hooked up, then after a while it started giving me that error. So I popped in my old drive so that I could at least boot my computer. When I did that I tried one last time to repair windows which resulted with my other installation popping up on my boot menu with (recovered) next to it.

Have you ran the repair on the hard drive that`s not booting ?

Yeah it never completes, it either hangs there forever or says the drive cannot be repaired.

I think Gregrocker can help you with this problem.

Post a pic of disk management.

Hello and welcome to SevenForums.

I'm not sure i understand either.

It sounds like you can boot the PC with the OLD HD/OS, and the new HD is connected.
If so, you should attach a FULL screen print of the Disk Management window from:
Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management

I'm not an expert with this but, clarify exactly what happened, what you did, why,...
It sounds like your new HD/OS did work, and now it doesn't...
I assume you don't have a backup image to restore...

gregrocker is among the best and most experienced I've seen on this forum for resolving this type of issue.

regards,
david

Okay here is the picture of my disk manager, I pointed out which drive is the new drive and which one is the old one.

So here is what happened:

-Installed windows 7 on new HD with only new HD installed
-New HD stopped booting
-Attempted running start up repair, which did not work
-Put in old HD so I can use my old version of windows
-Ran windows repair cd with old HD as main HD it "recovered" the windows installation on my new HD and put it on my boot select screen.
-Could then boot to new HD windows install and it runs perfectly.
-However if I try to boot with new HD my primary drive it won't boot.


Also now trying to run either my bought windows install disc or a new recovery disc made from my windows 7 installation I get an error saying that the recovery disc is not compatible with my installation of windows and does not even give me access to the repair/recovery options.

You have to mark C: active and then run the startup repair. I would also have it plugged into the 1st sata port.