Start up failing after removal of second hard drive

Hello,

I recently decided to remove one of my hard drives for use in another PC.

Ever since removal I have not been able to boot back into Windows, I just get a black screen with a flashing _ in the left hand top corner.

I have tried Startup Repair and also manually rebuilding the MBR.

The partition status when I have a look at it with Acronis Disk Director is also marked as Active, System and Boot.

I did notice at the bottom of the startup repair diagnosis and repair log that I have attached to this post that is says "Boot status indicates that the OS booted successfully."

It would be a great if someone could help me with this problem, it's really starting to drive me nuts now.

Ben.

As you removed your first HD Drive.

   Information

Boot up using the Startup Repair CD or Windows 7 DVD. (not the OEM manufacturer's Recovery Disk) If you have a Netbook, you will need a CD/DVD drive.
NOTE: Make sure no USB drives are plugged in.
Do not use a USB Pendrive for Startup Repair.
startup repair disc-create

Do a Strartup Repair:
Startup Repair
Note: You may need to do startup repair 3 to 4 times.
Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

theog said:

As you removed your first HD Drive.

   Information

Boot up using the Startup Repair CD or Windows 7 DVD. (not the OEM manufacturer's Recovery Disk) If you have a Netbook, you will need a CD/DVD drive.
NOTE: Make sure no USB drives are plugged in.
Do not use a USB Pendrive for Startup Repair.
startup repair disc-create

Do a Strartup Repair:
Startup Repair
Note: You may need to do startup repair 3 to 4 times.
Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

Okay I have tried Startup repair 14 times and still no progress, startup repair doesn't state that anything is wrong.

1) Use the Rebuild BCD in this tutorial:
How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows




2) Fix MBR.

theog said:

1) Use the Rebuild BCD in this tutorial:
How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows




2) Fix MBR.

Okay I done that, once I type bootrec /RebuildBcd it displays

Scanning all disks for Windows installations.

Please wait, since this may take a while...

Successfully scanned Windows installations.
Total identified Windows installations: 0
The operation completed successfully.

May be a video issue. Can you boot into safe mode? Hit F8 repeatedly at boot, then choose safe mode.

Bill2 said:

May be a video issue. Can you boot into safe mode? Hit F8 repeatedly at boot, then choose safe mode.

This is one thing about my motherboard that I find annoying, when I hit F8 repeatedly during boot it takes me to the motherboards boot menu to select which drive I'd like to boot from.

Some how I have managed to resolve this issue, using Acronis Disk Director what I did was deleted the volume then recovered the volume with Acronis Recovery Expert, rebooted and to my surprise it booted up windows no problem at all. The only thing I need to do now is edit the boot menu with EasyBCD 2.1 so I don't have wait 30 seconds or manually select the OS to boot up.

Thank you very much for your help though guys :)

whs said:

I suspect that your active partition with the bootmgr was on that drive. If you want to run a startup repair on your C drive, you must first make it active. You can use the bootable CD of PW for that (last entry on the webpage): Free Download Magic Partition Manager Software - Partition Wizard Online

Hmm, I guess I was 1 minute too late.

Ah yes I think the bootmgr was on the drive that I removed.
I made sure the partition was marked as active with Acronis Disk Director bootable usb.
At first I did make the partition active using the DISKPART command.

Yes just a minute or two late.

It's very odd that removing the volume then restoring it solved the problem, just glad that's solved it, I really was not looking forward to do a clean install or even a restore from a backup as it was over 24hrs old. Now I know if even removing a HDD I should always do a full backup just in case.