"Windows not installed on the drive from which it boots"

gregrocker said:

It would be reassuring to see another screenshot of Disk mgmt.

Here goes the screenshot after Windows Startup Repair...so am I OK now? Can I delete the bootmgr file from the E drive? Thanks

As Gary said in Post #3 you need to mark Disk1 Inactive. The Active flag is planted only to point to a partition that is intended to boot the OS. Partition - Mark as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums

gregrocker said:

As Gary said in Post #3 you need to mark Disk1 Inactive. The Active flag is planted only to point to a partition that is intended to boot the OS. Partition - Mark as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums

Ok, got it! Here's the screenshot, is it fine now? Can I safely delete the bootmgr file from the E drive? Also, even though the E drive was marked as ACTIVE, the PC still booted correclty from drive C, so what kind of conflict can occur had I left the E drive as ACTIVE?

antares said:

Ok, got it! Here's the screenshot, is it fine now? Can I safely delete the bootmgr file from the E drive? Also, even though the E drive was marked as ACTIVE, the PC still booted correclty from drive C, so what kind of conflict can occur had I left the E drive as ACTIVE?

Yes, it's fine now.

Because it was marked Active, the C drive successfully received the System boot files when the repairs were run, since you'd unplugged the other HD so it couldn't interfere. It then continued to boot from C when you plugged back in the other HD because it remained set first to boot in BIOS.

By deactivating E it no longer can interfere whether you delete bootmgr or not. If it did interfere then what works is to move the data off to wipe the HD boot code with Diskpart Clean Command, before repartitioning as a Logical data drive which can not be marked Active and therefore can never interfere or have the boot files derailed to it. Partition / Extended : Logical Drives - Windows 7 Forums

An incorrectly-marked Active partition can derail the System boot files to itself when repairs or reinstall are run. Only the OS partition or it's boot partition should be marked Active. If you multi-boot OS's on different HD's via the BIOS, then each HD might have its own System Active partition to make it independently bootable.

It'd be interesting to know how the E drive became ACTIVE SYSTEM boot in the first place because all I did was a clean install of Windows in the SSD's (under RAID0).

How are the SSD's configured into a RAID0? Is what we're seeing there at DISK0 actually two SSD's?

From what we know the System boot files will be placed on the first-in-order Active partition, however one reason we strongly recommend unplugging all other HD's during install is there are cases where install will write the System boot files to the first-in-order Primary partition whether it is Active or not.

So unless you swapped the SSD (array?) and HD later I can't say why the install wrote the boot files to a partition that was not in a preceding position., although it may have to do with the port(s) the SSD or its array is plugged into which might make the Disk Mgmt view inverted.

If you have Partition Wizard CD it's view can sometimes be more reliable and has settled other issues where discrepancies existed.

gregrocker said:

How are the SSD's configured into a RAID0? Is what we're seeing there at DISK0 actually two SSD's?

Hi Greg, let me explain again:
INITIAL STATE OF MY PC:
- TWO IDENTICAL PHYSICAL SSD's (256MB Samsung 830 Series) configured in RAID0 (acting as single 512MB logical drive C)
- ONE 2TB HDD as 2nd internal storage drive

I clean installed Win7x64 in this initial state and chose the C drive as the OS drive.
For some reason I ignore the HDD became ACTIVE SYSTEM and bootmgr ended up in this HDD instead of the C drive. It could be that I had the HDD physically connected during install (I'm not sure about this), but in any case I indicated the Windows Install process to install Windows in the C drive.

Then I decided to encrypt the whole volume C with Truecrypt, but since Truecrypt does not support RAID (neither does Bitlocker), I decided to change my system to the following state:

FINAL STATE OF MY PC:
- ONE SINGLE PHYSICAL SSD (512MB Samsung 840 Pro)
- ONE 2TB HDD as 2nd internal storage drive (same as initial state)

In order to transfer the RAID0 to the single SSD I did a clone with Acronis TIH2014, but the cloned disk (the single 512MB SSD) was unable to boot (I guess because the original RAID0 was lacking the bootmgr), but a Windows STartup Repair solved the issue.
When Truecrypt came out with the message "Windows not installed on the drive from which it boots" that made me discover that the C drive was lacking the bootmgr (which was present in the HDD), which in turn made me post this thread, whcih solved my issue and now I successfully encrypted the whole volume.

antares said:

Hi Greg, let me explain again:

Where was this explained earlier? I repeatedly checked your original post for this RAID info.

Nevertheless the additional info provides the answer: When you ran Startup Repair on the clone which would not boot because it never held the System boot files, it found the boot files on the HD and repaired them so it would start, booted again by the HD.

The original repair needed to be done with C marked Active and the HDD unplugged.

Did the cloning utility ask if you wanted C to be Active? That might explain why it became so.