Boot error after removing non booting hdd...

Hi all and thanks in advance if anyone can help.

I have a homebuilt system which has never let me down.

In short; I want to remove a drive from my pc but doing so causes a boot error. The drive I'm removing is not the boot drive, just storage.

The problem I have has just started as I have a acquired a Windows 7 Hom Premium upgrade disk with an old Dell PC. I am not, for other reasons using that code on the pc it came with. The main reason is that I have removed the hdd for another pc....this one. So I have upgraded the old XP install on this pc.
The system would not accept the license initially and kept saying it was wrong. Was the software aware it was not in the pc it should have been in by reading hardware signatures or something?

After leaving the pc on the license key screen for 12 hours i returned clicked to exit and the install booted up without a problem.

In this pc were two hdd's, one of which I have tried to remove and keep getting an error code on boot up.

Windows could not start....missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
Please re-install a copy of the above file

I have tried restores and repairs etc but figure that boot info was copied to the 500GB drive i want to remove.

I have reservations about doing another new install as the same trick may not work but want to add the 500GB of storage to the media centre pc downstairs to increase the storage capacity.

Hey Magus, I took a look at the disk management and found no partitions on the disk. I acquired this from a broken lappy a little while ago and formatted the whole disk to a primary partition. See the screen dump I uploaded.

Anything else I can try?

EvileDNA said:

Hey Magus, I took a look at the disk management and found no partitions on the disk. I acquired this from a broken lappy a little while ago and formatted the whole disk to a primary partition. See the screen dump I uploaded.

Anything else I can try?

Your screen shot shows that that other drive, the one you want to remove, is actually the drive that holds the System Reserve partition and without it the system won't boot.

So you will need to do a Repair install once you remove that other drive and maybe do it 3 times.

Check the tutorials for instructions.

Win7 is booting off of DISK0 in screenshot as signfied by the System Active labels.

To move them to Disk1 power down to unplug Disk0, swap its cable to Win7 HD or set it first to boot in BIOS setup, boot into Win7 installer or System Repair Disk to run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times (This is not the same as a Repair Install).

You can then plug back in the other HD to wipe it using Diskpart Clean Command, repartition it as desired in Disk Mgmt, or at a minimum mark Inactive so it won't interfere in the future. Partition - Mark as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums

Keep Win7 HD set first HD to boot in BIOS setup.

nice work boys. bits of each suggestion worked.

Now I'm off to use the internet for what it was designed for.

...just reconfig the mouse for my left and and i'm off!