New
#1
Fresh install. Good. Attach another SSD in order to dual-boot. Busted.
Hi,
I've done a long-overdue clean install of Windows 7 and everything was fine (except for the 2-day wait for updates to become available). However, now i am trying to install a second SSD for the purposes of dual booting with Linux.
Windows just refuses to boot unless i disconnect that second SSD. There is no problem with detection or me not selecting the right boot device etc. Windows tries but fails to boot.
The bootloader loads and then it tells me that there was a problem starting windows. It gives me that white on black menu with (more or less): Try to repair the startup or boot normally. Both options simply return you to the same point after only a few seconds or if Grub is installed on the other drive it will hand over to Grub after saying "Windows is loading files..." - it will not boot into Windows.. Disconnect the other SSDs and everything works fine.
I used to dual-boot with this computer with these drives.
The only thing i can think of as being different is the BIOS setting was set for HDD before and now it is SSD. This was changed after the fresh Win7 install (i didn't even know it was a thing until i was having problems). It's an ASRock Extreme6 Z77 motherboard. The SSD setting does provide improved performance over the HDD setting so i'm loathed to return to it or reinstall with the SSD setting from the beginning. Note i tried to return the motherboard to Hard Drive setting but it made no difference.
Thanks.
Last edited by Recusant; 15 Nov 2016 at 05:16. Reason: small updates