After clean install, computer won't boot; grub rescue prompt

Hello everyone,

I did some searching and saw this previously answered a bunch of times, but I haven't had any luck with the existing answers.

I built my own machine a few years ago, so it is not standard. Everything was booting just fine until I decided I wanted to do a fresh reinstall of Windows 7. After doing the installation, the computer restarted and before it would get to the windows boot screen, I now get stuck in grub rescue prompts. I tried Startup repair. I tried going into command prompt in repair computer and using the bootrec (fixmbr, fixboot, and the rebuildbcd) commands. Still no luck. At one time, a long time ago, I had linux dual booted. I don't recall if I ever had it on the same drive as Windows, but I know for sure at one point it was on a different drive.

Can someone tell me how to get past this? I can manually get by it if I boot to HDD and then select the drive, but if I let it go through the normal boot process without me interfering, I get stuck in the grub rescue.

I'm sure the experts will need more info provided, so please let me know what info you need.

Thanks!

The repairs which you've probably already run to try to get it started are to confirm the Partition Marked Active is 100mb System Reserved (preferred if you have it) or C, then run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

Did you delete all partitions during install which is the bare minimum that should be done to get a clean install?

But the older version of GRUB can corrupt WIn7 if on the drive so it would be better to wipe the HD with Clean Command Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command then start over following these same steps to get a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7.

Thanks for your reply. I was able to figure it out late last night (and didn't have time to update this as I had to get to bed).

Anyway, somehow the boot order for the HDDs was changed in BIOS. Once I reordered them to the proper sequence, I booted fine.

To answer your questions brought up, I didn't actively delete any partitions myself. All I did was put in the Windows 7 DVD, click Install and do the Custom option. However, I think I may redo everything in the manner you suggested so I do truly have a clean install. I looked and did not before (and still do not) have a separate 100mb partition for System, it is just all C.

If you already had the disk partitioned with just one large C partition and selected that for install, then you're probably fine. I'd look for a windows.old folder in the root of C which would mean the disk wasn't booted and partition wasn't formatted first. This folder contains the entire previous install including files which you may want to keep, at least until you're sure you have everything.

If performance is good you probably dont' need to do it over, but I'd compare what you did to the perfect install compiled in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 to help decide.