My boot files are all screwed up now...
I just booted up from the DVD and into recovery and tried a repair, and it failed. I loaded up the command prompt and did a c:\ and previously it showed the contents of my SSD, now the c:\ shows my 750gb drive.
the disk is still there, when I do diskpart, list disks, list partitions
As the new Dell has a uEFI/BIOS firmware.
How to install Windows 64 bit on a uEFI/BIOS firmware:
UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with
Partitions need.
I don't want to re-install Windows...I want to fix my boot records.
What is interesting is if I use diskpart and look at my list of volumes, my SSD drive shows "hidden" under Info, but if I look at it in gParted in Ubuntu Live, it says "boot" and hidden is unchecked.
With UEFI you need 3 partitions that is part of the GPT .
If you want MBR you would need to disable your UEFI inside your BIOS.
Your not going to believe this..had a guy help me with gParted..we copied the 500mb MBR partition from the 750gb drive, over to the 500mb partition I created on the ssd...and my computer boots up again.
WOOT!
It sounds like it wasn't even installed in UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums if you repaired it by copying an MBR format boot partition over from the old install.
Can you post back a screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image - Windows 7 Forums so we can see what happened.
HI Gregrocker,
Yea, honestly I am a bit confused myself. The computer came with Windows 8, so I do recall seeing those 3 partitions that were mentioned above. System, MSR, and Primary. If I recall, out of the box the Dell had like 6 partitions on that 1 drive. I blew away all but the EFI 500mb and the 40mb OEM partition (glad I did). I know it is recommended to remove the secondary drive while installing the OS to the SSD..I don't recall if I did this or not. Why the secondary drive was important for the boot is beyond me. What is on that EFI is beyond me, it's a 500MB partition but only like 47MB of content.
My understanding is that the Windows 8 can take advantage of a true UEFI environement, but Windows 7 cannot.
The new HD Dell sent me, 750gb, btw still clicks at those same moments..so either the batch is bad, or by design they just have that flaw. Dell said they are sending me another..I asked if other brands were available lol. It's a Western Digital. But during the formatting of the new one, from within Disk Management I was given MBR or GPT. So I chose GPT, then put an NTFS file system.
Here is a screenshot of my OLD setup
Here is my latest and my computer is thus far running great. I ran a chkdsk after adding that 500mb partition and all was clean.
I am actually happy to have this working without needing those other partitions on the old 750gb drive. Now this latest dell HD has the full use for just storage.
Actually Win7 can also be installed to UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums.'
But a Win8 PC not only has UEFI but also Secure Boot.
So to install Win7 you must at least turn off Secure Boot in BIOS setup, then either install to UEFI per above tutorial or Bypass UEFI to Install WIn7 to a normal MBR hard drive you've wiped to clear the GPT formatting.
In this case if you say that copying to the HD the EFI System partition allows it to boot then it is likely UEFI but still seems unusual since that normally requires two special partitions as such.
You can confirm that the disk is a GPT disk if you right click on the disk # in Disk Mgmt and it has Convert to MBR Disk now. (See screenshot below)
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