Solved Computer changed HD letter and will not Boot

[Geneo713]

Hey All,
First of all, thank you for taking the time to read my nerve-racking conundrum, Im at witts end.

I was on my computer when I noticed that the file icons were not what I had picked. This was my first inclination that something was amiss. I opened a program I have used for years, File Type Manager, to fix it. Thats when things started getting screwey. Noton's "Sonar" didnt like the program and deleted it. Then I made the mistake of re-booting it, thinking I could just restore it from a previous point if it was too messed up.

Well, from then on I get the computer's splash screen and it goes strait to a black screen with a cursur in the upper left corner that does a whole bunch of nothing.
When I booted it off the Restore disk I see that it had my boot hard drive (I have only one) listed as D: instead of C:. Using the command prompt I was able to see that my hard drive appears to have all my data there, just under the wrong drive letter. The "C:" drive has nothing on it and is labeled as being SYSTEM RESERVED.

Now, I looked at it's BIOS and I cant assign a drive letter from there. I have tried to restore my computer from an earlier point from System Recovery Options. No change. It still looks at my Hard Drive as D:. It will not boot off the Hard Drive at all, so I cant even go into safe mode. I have seen similar problems to this elsewhere on the net, but have found no answers that would be applicable to my situation. I am dumbfounded and would appreciate any help or advice anybody is willing to give. I am about to loose it give my 'puter a terribly violent reprograming.

Thanks Alot,
Geneo713

 

[Britton30]

Likely your C: was renamed to D: because you booted from a DVD. The boot drive is, or should be, C:.
Is that an ACER factory recover disk?

Oops! I forgot to say Welcome to Seven Forums!
EDIT: The C: is the boot partition Windows creates but it shouldn't have any drive lteer, but that may be from booting from the recover disk. Try booting to safe mode, repeatedly tapping F8 during reboot and choose Safe Mode with networking. Run a Norton full scan from there.
Antoher thing to try is the Startup Repair accessed in the same way as above. It may need 3 attempts to repair the boot partition.

 

[wanchoo]

I think the Drive letters can be changed using a Partition Manager Boot Disk. Have you tried doing that and renaming your original C drive as C and making it active?

 

[Geneo713]

Thanks for the Welcome and the help. Been lurking here every once in a while when the stuff hits the fan, technichly speaking, with my 'puter. Usualy get the problem resolved from someone else's similar problem, but this one has me stumped. I can not get it into safe mode as it will not even try to boot from my hard drive. Ive tried mashing F8 during startup, and get no response. I used startup repair once I booted using recovery disks (not acer rec disks, they gave me nothing) and the startup repair said everything was fine and asked if I had added any new USB perifirals (which I had not). I just tried it a third time and still get "Startup Repair could not detect a problem"

The only way I can get it to boot at all its with the Boot Recovery disk and when I goto the Command prompt in system recovery options, it starts me out in
X:\windows\system32> (with X: labeled Boot)
I can goto D: and see what looks like all my HD data, and when I goto C: it very difenitly labels it as C: "C is SYSTEM RESERVED"

I am using a program called VMware, that makes a virtual XP OS and virtual partition when in use, but I dont think that this is the problem as it is not an accual partition. But I am not rulling anything out. Any Ideas?
Thanks Again,
Geneo713

Likely your C: was renamed to D: because you booted from a DVD. The boot drive is, or should be, C:.
Is that an ACER factory recover disk?

Oops! I forgot to say Welcome to Seven Forums!
EDIT: The C: is the boot partition Windows creates but it shouldn't have any drive lteer, but that may be from booting from the recover disk. Try booting to safe mode, repeatedly tapping F8 during reboot and choose Safe Mode with networking. Run a Norton full scan from there.
Antoher thing to try is the Startup Repair accessed in the same way as above. It may need 3 attempts to repair the boot partition.

 

[Geneo713]

Thanks for the Help,
No I havent tried that, I do not have a partition manager boot disk. It is reading a drive called C: at the moment, would it refuse to name D: (my boot and only HD) C: as I already have a volume named that? Where could I get a partition manager boot disk? I am not familiar with them.

Geneo713

I think the Drive letters can be changed using a Partition Manager Boot Disk. Have you tried doing that and renaming your original C drive as C and making it active?

 

[theog]

The only way I can get it to boot at all its with the Boot Recovery disk and when I goto the Command prompt in system recovery options, it starts me out in
X:\windows\system32> (with X: labeled Boot)
I can goto D: and see what looks like all my HD data, and when I goto C: it very difenitly labels it as C: "C is SYSTEM RESERVED"

The drive letters are OK.



I would Check the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tools.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
HD Diagnostic

 

[wanchoo]

There seems to be no Active, Primary Drive. Try booting from System Reserved Drive if you can if booting from C fails.

There is an excellent shareware boot disk of Acronis Disk Director Suite and another free one of Partition Wizard that too is excellent. Both programs can be downloaded from the Net.

The only way I can get it to boot at all its with the Boot Recovery disk and when I goto the Command prompt in system recovery options, it starts me out in
X:\windows\system32> (with X: labeled Boot)
I can goto D: and see what looks like all my HD data, and when I goto C: it very difenitly labels it as C: "C is SYSTEM RESERVED"

The drive letters are OK.

View attachment 193602

I would Check the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tools.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
HD Diagnostic

 

[Geneo713]

Thanks for all the help guys, but I cant seem to get anywhere with this.

@Theog - I downloaded the diagnostic tools for my Western Digital HD, but I cant get any of them to work through the command prompt, nor are they bootable. I tried the Windows and DOS versions and neither woud work. I get "subsystem needed to support the image type is not present" from the Windows version.

@Wanchoo - I have C: drive listed as primary boot (& only HD) in BIOS and it will not boot from it, When I check it with command prompt, there is nothing there, but it is labeled as System Reserved. In the System Recovery Options screen after a Recovery Disk boot it has my OS listed as "Location-(D Primary Hard Drive" Is there a way to boot from it. I havent been able to do much with only the Recovery boot disk to boot from. I cant even use safe mode. It goes strait from the Acer splash screen to blank & blinking cursur.

So that I am up with what is happening, my only hard drive that I have, always used as c: and booted from has no data. It is listed as system reserved, and what I see in comand prompt as D drive, with all my data, but not being booted from is my C: drives data? And is supposed to be that way? Could it be trying to boot from C: and not finding anythng because it is looking at the c: drive with no data?

 

[theog]

@Theog - I downloaded the diagnostic tools for my Western Digital HD, but I cant get any of them to work through the command prompt, nor are they bootable. I tried the Windows and DOS versions and neither woud work. I get "subsystem needed to support the image type is not present" from the Windows version.

Download the bootable DOS ISO & burn to CD.

 

[wanchoo]

Please read the thread "Windows 7 Forums > Windows 7 help and support > Installation & Setup » BOOTMGR is Missing". The Thread Starter was unable to boot till he tried to boot from the System Reserved Partition. Did you try that?

And finally when all avenues seem closed then the last option remaining is to start all over again by deleting all the partitions and then repartitioning the HD and reinstalling Windows 7 from scratch. This never fails if all the hardware in the computer is functioning properly.

Thanks for all the help guys, but I cant seem to get anywhere with this.

@Wanchoo - I have C: drive listed as primary boot (& only HD) in BIOS and it will not boot from it, When I check it with command prompt, there is nothing there, but it is labeled as System Reserved. In the System Recovery Options screen after a Recovery Disk boot it has my OS listed as "Location-(D Primary Hard Drive" Is there a way to boot from it. I havent been able to do much with only the Recovery boot disk to boot from. I cant even use safe mode. It goes strait from the Acer splash screen to blank & blinking cursur.

So that I am up with what is happening, my only hard drive that I have, always used as c: and booted from has no data. It is listed as system reserved, and what I see in comand prompt as D drive, with all my data, but not being booted from is my C: drives data? And is supposed to be that way? Could it be trying to boot from C: and not finding anythng because it is looking at the c: drive with no data?

 

[Bumpkin]

Download Partition Wizard Free boot disk Free Download Magic Partition Manager Software - Partition Wizard Online
Burn the .iso, don't just copy it to a CD.
Boot with the CD and remove "C" from the system reserved partition. Be sure it is still marked active.
Next change the Windows/data partition to "C".
When you get it fixed consider making a image of your drive.

 

[theog]

The drive letters are OK.

 

[gregrocker]

If you have run Startup Repair repeatedly from the System Repair Disk
and gotten nowhere then confirm that the System Reserved partition is marked Active: Partition - Mark as Active (Method Two)

Now run Startup Repair 3 Separate Times.

You can boot free Partition Wizard to mark Active, then click on the Disk # to highlight it, from Disk tab select Rebuild MBR, Apply, reboot. This may preclude the need to run the Repairs from DVD or Repair CD.

If these fail, mark the Win7 partition Active and try Rebuild MBR and/or Startup Repairs x3.

You can copy out your files using DVD/Repair CD: Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console

Then run Factory Recovery from its partition, disks you made or order from Tech Support, or Clean Reinstall with Win7 DVD. Reinstalling Windows 7

 

[lehnerus2000]

Is your BIOS still pointing at the correct HDD?

I've had my BIOS decide to try to boot from a different drive (I think that I may have swapped the MB SATA connections though).

 

[Ishmum]

WOW ok, I posted the same solution as Bumpkin, but the mods didnt approve it. Nice way to steal people's credits mr moderators

 

[Geneo713]

Thanks Guys for all the help and good ideas. I was really out of any. Im still not sure exactly what caused the problem, but I checked out this thread that Wanchoo suggested. The guy was running a Linux system, so if I saw the thread I probibly dismissed it off-hand. but the problem with his OS was similar. BOOTREC.EXE from my recovery disk's command prompt got my HD booting again. Just in time too, the blinking cursur on the black screen of death was begining to mock my futile attempts, but sanity my is retained.
Thanks again everybody,
Geneo713

Please read the thread "Windows 7 Forums > Windows 7 help and support > Installation & Setup » BOOTMGR is Missing". The Thread Starter was unable to boot till he tried to boot from the System Reserved Partition. Did you try that?

And finally when all avenues seem closed then the last option remaining is to start all over again by deleting all the partitions and then repartitioning the HD and reinstalling Windows 7 from scratch. This never fails if all the hardware in the computer is functioning properly.