Moved boot manager, 7 drive still refuses to boot without old drive.

DO NOT PUT PANCaKES BACK IN THE PC AS DISK0
DISK0 MUST BE WAFFLES & FIRST BOOT IN BIOS.

CabbageODiscord said:

Alright, so I download the ISO version of PW and burn it to a disc, then boot from that? Just want to make sure.

Yes, follow the steps exactly. Post back any questions or results.

theog said:

DO NOT PUT PANCaKES BACK IN THE PC AS DISK0
DISK0 MUST BE WAFFLES & FIRST BOOT IN BIOS.

You know just because it's been a while since you posted this doesn't mean it's suddenly disappeared from the thread and needs to be re-added. That post was only describing what I did before I posted here, it's not representative of my method every time I try the fix. Trust me, I get it.

And if a fix fails I do need to set everything back the way it was to get back on here. I can't afford to just leave it like that, or I can't even respond here.

gregrocker said:

Boot PW CD, rightclick on D to Modify>Set to Inactive, OK.

Making sure C is still set Active, click on it's HD to highlight it, from PW Disk tab select Rebuild MBR, Apply all steps. Restart.

If this fails, unplug D to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times or until Win7 starts, regardless of what it reports.

If repairs will not rewrite the System boot files then the config was likely messed up beyond repair in something else which was done outside these automated steps.

You can try with PW CD Resizing C from the left by 200mb, to create a Primary partition labeled System Reserved, mark it Active, no letter. Then with D unplugged run 3 Startup Repairs to see if it will create a boot partition for you which also places the Repair Console on F8.

I have one more question about this. If I resize to create a separate partition on Waffles, what happens to my data? I'm sure it's not entirely contiguous on the disk, and I have a matter of a few gigabytes free on the disk. Space is why I want to format Pancakes in the first place.

Resizing moves the data over to free up the space, checking the disk as it goes. Only Disk Mgmt and PW CD are failsafe, only PW CD can REsize from the left.

Formatting is not the best way to free up space. Uninstall unwanted programs, clean out temporary files, delete unwanted files, run CCleaner, Defrag Disk with a good defragger like Puran's Boot Time defrag with full Disk Check (enabling Intelligent Optimizer on Operations tab).

Pancakes is the drive I want to format. It contains an old install of WinXP and a bunch of useless programs and files that are completely redundant. I want to free that disk up as a data drive, and be able to run Windows 7 self-contained on Waffles. I don't like my install drive relying on another drive to boot for no reason.

Right, unfortunately Win7 places the boot files on the first Active Partition even if you then select another HD to install the OS. It will prompt that it is about to do this but many don't fully understand the message.

Have you tried running Startup Repair 3 times on C, with D both marked Inactive and unplugged? What are the exact results?

There are other things that can be tried if Repair will not write the System boot files to C, such as constructing the System Reserved boot partition as given earlier.

Still haven't done it. I'm in the middle of a project right now, and I can't really afford to be tinkering with the machine I need to be working on all day. Don't feel pressured to keep responding at the moment, I'll post again when I've tried it.

1) Copy & paste Boot files.
2) Do a Startup Repair once.
3) Mark Data Hd inactive.

You must mark Win7 active and unplug or mark Inactive any other partition before running the Repairs or it will simply reinstate the existing System flag.

Manually copying the files is unnecessary in Win7 as Startup Repair will write new boot files to the Active partition once it determines they are not presaent, or are not reparable if present.