I see. Well this time the repair program ran after I ignorantly put the disk in the other DVDhaha
But repair failed to make the repair.
See image below . . .
I figured it would be unbootable if I delete those partitions but hoped the repair would fix it or there might be a way to add the boot section on manually (shows my lack of knowledge)
Just what is that second partition for since it seems to be totally unused
Did you booted the win 7 installation disk as UEFI?
Did you detach ALL other drives (including disk 3 - Backup)?
I just tried it again but this time I ran system restore (a restore point before updating IE to IE 11) but that failed as well saying an unspecified error occurred (0x8000ffff)
If it falls to this . . . what's the best way to wipe this desk and start over AGAIN (this will be the third attempt) the last install (last night) worked fine until it went into hibernation. It woke up from hibernation this morning but then would not boot up again after I booted into Win-7 32. (I have no programs on the 64 bit yet.)
I booted into it four or five times last night till it was time to watch the World Series . . .
OK. The one change I made was disabling hibernation this morning and then deleting the hibernation system file. I got NO error message that the fire was in use. Surly THAT can't be an issue.
I took the time to delete all the partitions and reinstall to a clean disk with no other drive connected.
The install went without a hitch and I could boot into it at will but as soon as I re-connected the other drives and booted into one of them I could no longer boot into Win-7-64-bit. To wipe the drive and reinstall only takes about 30 minutes.
When I try to boot into it it just stalls and boots into WinXP. If I disconnect XP it boots into 7-32-bit If I disconnect that as well it just wont boot at all.
I'm stumped.
I've managed to fix it two more times but every time I hook up the SSD with Win-XP on it, it brakes the boot system for 7-64 and I have to run system restore. I cannot for the life of me figure out how this can be happening. I've spent hours installing drivers and security updates and setting preferences this time so I hope I have enough restore points that I wont ruin it trying to figure this out. I've been going back and forth between 7-64 & 7-32 all day with no problems as long as I keep the XP drive unplugged.
One really strange issue is that Windows Disk Management shows two partitions, AOMEI Partition Manager shows three partitions and EaseUs shows FIVE partitions on that Drive. What the heck is this about?
The boot menu has changed as well. It now has a selection for UEFI: Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB. If I select the SATA version of the same drive the boot fails with or without XP. If I select Windows Boot Manager it fails as well and asks me to provide a bootable device (paraphrased)
Is this Boot Manager NORMAL for a UEFI install of a 64 bit OS? I read somewhere that it is. It sure is annoying. Can this boot manager be edited so that if I select it I get some valid options? If it's going to be there it ought to do something besides asking me to provide it something bootable. I have only a little experience with bcdedit.exe (just used it to rename OSs)
Thanks for listening
John
As I already described, you have two kinds of disk low level format: MBR - Legacy and UEFI - GPT.
The disk 1 and 3 are MBR - Legacy and disk 2 is UEFI - GPT.
You made a big mess when installing Win 7 64 on disk 2. Fist of all, you have used a program to partition the disk and that is why you have two unallocated partitions. It is not necessary to use this kind of programs as Win 7 installation wizard will do it for you.
My suggestion: Reinstall win 7, making the disk 2 Legacy
- Detach Disk 1 and 3 (SATA cable or power cable)
- Normally boot you win 7 installation disk (not UEFI boot)
- Go to install, advanced, delete ALL partitions- create new.
- it will create two partitions:
- 100M MS reserved - RAW
- A big NTFS
Install on the big NTFS
It will install Win 7 64 on disk 2 as MBR - Legacy, so all disks will be the same type (MBR - Legacy)
I hope your solution works but I did not use any program to partition the disk. It was a new disk and I only used the partition program to look at it. I did however format the disk with Windows Disk Management console before installing 7-64-bit. On my second install attempt I did as you suggest and selected "delete ALL partitions" before installing.
I will try it again and reboot after deleting all partitions to make sure they are in fact deleted. I dont remember doing that last time.
Now that its running good with all MB drivers and updates and personal tweaks (without the XP disk installed) I will first try and back up the Windows installation with Acronis TI and do as you suggested . . . and then restore the backup but NOT the boot sector (not the entire drive of course)
I'll wait a while to see if you have a reason to not do that backup/restore.
Thanks for hanging in here with me.
Will the Windows Backup that comes with Windows 7 do what I want . . . to backup my system in it's present state with all the updates and restore it? Backup up to another drive?
Ive been using backup software for a long time. Started with Colorado Tape Backup in the early 90's but what i always hated about Microsoft is they changed programs with the new operating system and they would not work with the older archives so I quit trusting any backup program MS provided.
You could use windows system image. It works well enough.
It is present in windows 10 also, bizarrely named "windows 7 backup". The win 10 image restore gui does not restore win7 created images. However, the win10 wbadmin.exe commandline does.
The advantage of windows system image is that it is in .vhd format ( .vhdx in win10 ). Several 3rd party applications can mount and extract .vhd(x) images. They can also be mounted read/write and serviced - adding/removing things as you wish.
Images created by 3rd party programs are usually proprietary, can't be accessed by any other programs, and can't be mounted read/write.
[ Note: There are a few 3rd party imagers that will offer to create in either their own proprietary format, or in .vhd format - Paragon and O&O diskimage, for example. ]
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