Windows 7 wont boot from SSD

Hi sorry not sure if this is in the right place, but i currently have a custom build desktop (about a year old) with a HDD and SSD with the operating system(windows 7) on the SSD. Anyway when i boot up the splash screen for the motherboard lags for a second and when i go into the bios and check the boot options the first option is set to windows boot manager but when i change it to the SSD and reboot i get the message about windows can't find bootable device so i have to use wbm (which is clearly slowing down my boot time). I just wondered if maybe i didnt install the os properly or something and if i need to do something or if a reinstall is the only option.

Hi here is a capture of my disk management

The boot manager partition (located on the #1 drive in the BIOS boot sequence list) must be marked "active". If there is no "active" partition on the #1 boot drive (and if you also don't have a bootable CD or USB drive inserted) then you will get this message about "no bootable device".

From your description it sounds to me like the previously "active" boot manager partition on your SSD has somehow lost its "active" indicator.

I'd download Partition Wizard standalone boot CD ISO, and burn to CD. Then insert it in your machine and boot... which (if the CD is in front of the SSD in the BIOS boot sequence) should let you boot to the CD. Using PW in this standalone mode, you can examine your machine's other drives (and in particular the SSD). You can see if there actually is an "active" partition on the SSD, and if not you can use PW to re-set that "system reserved" partition (where Boot Manager lives) to "active".

That should hopefully resolve your issue, and booting through your SSD should once again be normal with no messages or problems.

Unfortunately, your screenshot from DISKMGMT does not have the "status" column spread so that we can see everything that's there. In particular, whether or not that 100MB "system reserved" partition is marked "active" or not is not shown.

But that's the issue we're concerned about. That 100MB partition is where Boot Manager lives, and it MUST be indicated as "active" in order to make the BIOS happy.

ah OK great cheers ill download that and give it a try. i just checked in the status bar and it doesn't seem that any of them are marked as active and when i right click it doesn't allow to mark as active its just greyed out

Just for your reference, here is my own Lenovo W530 laptop setup, with a 512GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD (and multiple partitions C-J).

Note that the Samsung 840 Pro SSD includes "Samsung Magician" software, to increase the performance of the SSD. This includes use of "over provisioning" on the drive to make use of whatever's unallocated to partitions (over a minimum recommended available unallocated space of about 10% of the total drive capacity), as well as to use free RAM in the machine to facilitate what they call "rapid mode".

Also, Samsung Magician can automatically change several crucial performance-related options in Windows specifically to improve SSD performance. And of course, you should disable the "defrag service" and prevent it from running once a week as it normally would by default. You don't want to run defrag on an SSD.

Just noticed that your 100MB "system reserved" partition shows as "EFI system partition". Did you change something? Is that how it has always been since you installed Win7?

I don't have EFI BIOS enabled on my W530, as I do not run Win8. So my "system reserved" is an ordinary partition.

I wonder if that's why you couldn't mark it "active"? I plead ignorance on EFI, I'm afraid. I just assumed it should be "active", but maybe this works differently with EFI?? Perhaps someone else with more knowledge on this can help out.

whs said:

Why would you want to have all those itty, bitty partitions. That is a very inefficient use of the space and not easy to manage for backups.

Because the contents of those partitions on my W530 matches the corresponding contents on my desktop machines, which have much larger and multiple real hard drives, so that the partitions themselves are also generally larger.

I don't want to bother with knowing or remembering where my fundamental data is located when I sit down to work at any of my machines, as far as "duplicated" data (or at least the folder names) that live on each of my machines. So to make my life easy, I just have these basic partitions allocated on all of my machines, so they're conceptually identical in structure even if the data living in those partitions on each individual machine is unique.

As far as backups, that is of no consequence. I have automatic "data" backups run using NovaBackup, and the jobs simply pick up from each partition (as well as C except for the \Windows folder) as necessary. I use Macrium Reflect for automatic "system image" for C (and system reserved) only, as my disaster recovery backup. These "data" and "system image" backup jobs just automatically run overnight daily, weekly, and monthly, backing up to my 2TB external USB 3.0 drive. I don't even think about it.