Reboots at Windows logo and goes to Startup Repair with new SSD

I installed a new SSD disk the other day, enabled AHCI and changed boot order so that the SSD was first and then booted with my Windows 7 DVD where I deleted the previous Windows installation that was on my regular HDD so that it became an unformatted drive. Then I installed Windows onto the SSD.

Now, sometimes when I boot my computer it reboots on the Windows logo only to go to recommend Startup Repair, but it works when I choose to boot normally this second time. Don't tell me I have to reinstall Windows just because I didn't unplug my two other (unformatted) drives when installing on the SSD?

When you were performing the clean installation it would have been a better idea to format the other two hard drives that contained a windows installation.

My opinion is that you should perform a new clean install, and format all the drives that will be in the system permanently before the set up. That is why it's called a clean install.

Erick Aguilar said:

When you were performing the clean installation it would have been a better idea to format the other two hard drives that contained a windows installation.

My opinion is that you should perform a new clean install, and format all the drives that will be in the system permanently before the set up. That is why it's called a clean install.

But how? As I said, I deleted the partitions on the old drive using the Windows disc. Isn't that clean enough?

Oh! My bad. I didn't pay attention.
Weird.

None of your HD's are in a RAID array correct? have you attempted the startup repair to see what happens then?

Erick Aguilar said:

Oh! My bad. I didn't pay attention.
Weird.

None of your HD's are in a RAID array correct? have you attempted the startup repair to see what happens then?

Just to be on the safe side. I was on this dialog:



Just a screenshot from Google, not my setup.

There I deleted the three partitions from my old 1 TB drive so that they became one unallocated space. So all in all I had three unallocated drives there: my 250 GB SSD, my old 1 TB HDD and a new 1 TB HDD which I installed together with the SSD. I selected the SSD as the installation target and formatted the two other HDD's a while later in Windows. Nothing wrong there?

I also installed some memory while putting in the new disks, but I remembered to enable XMP when enabling ACHI in BIOS.

Now, RAID: I haven't configured the HDD's to be in a RAID array, but I don't know how to check on that. This is done via BIOS?

I havent tried the repair yet, it just seems strange that it actually boots the second time around.

Yeah, that does seem like an interesting issue. If it's bugged and it always maintain the behaviour of working after teh second boot, I would recommend you re install windows with only the SSD, all the ram you will be using, and GPU if you don't have integrated graphics.

Instead of doing a reinstall, unplug the two HDDs and then repair the install on the SSD. Leave the two HDDs disconnected, and see if you can get the issue to reappear. If not, you should be good to go. If so, then it may be a bad SSD.

Erick Aguilar said:

Yeah, that does seem like an interesting issue. If it's bugged and it always maintain the behaviour of working after teh second boot, I would recommend you re install windows with only the SSD, all the ram you will be using, and GPU if you don't have integrated graphics.

Hm, okay. I think it's weird that you have to do that.

DeaconFrost said:

Instead of doing a reinstall, unplug the two HDDs and then repair the install on the SSD. Leave the two HDDs disconnected, and see if you can get the issue to reappear. If not, you should be good to go. If so, then it may be a bad SSD.

I will try that. Do you mean the Startup Repair that shows by itself or the one via the Windows disc or maybe they're the same thing?

Layback Bear said:

When installing Windows 7 on a hard drive or a SSD disconnect all other hard drives and SSD's. Then do your install.
Here is a little something to read through.
Clean Install Windows 7

Thank you, but I hope it's not going to get to that, now that I've installed and set up everything.

vieekk said:

I will try that. Do you mean the Startup Repair that shows by itself or the one via the Windows disc or maybe they're the same thing?

I believe they lead you to the same place, but you'll want to have your disc handy anyway for the process. This way, if the system is just repaired to boot all the time, you won't need to do a clean install or anything like that. It might save you some time...and then you can always revert to the clean install if this doesn't help.