Had BSOD, fixed that, accidentally set external hard drive as active

[patatesboy]

Hello,

I'm not new to these forums, they've been very helpful to me just browsing through when I have problems. I am new however to signing up. What happened to my computer is, I kept getting the BSOD, I went into safe mode, removed the most recent programs I had installed, and it stopped happening. I then proceeded to plug in my external hard drive. It was not recognizing it for some reason, so I went to disk management. It was listed there, just without a drive letter. I tried to assign it a drive letter, and it gave me an error message saying something about refreshing the list, (this is the error message I should have researched), I tried refreshing the drive list, and tried reassigning the drive letter, same message. I right clicked on the drive again, and I saw mark as active. For some stupid reason, I clicked on this. Then seeing that it didn't do anything, I thought maybe restarting the computer would maybe do the trick. Now my computer won't boot. It gets to the windows logo, and boom, restarts all over again. I tried many things like, startup repair, system restore, marking partition as active CMD, with diskpart, I also tried some of the commands in bootrec.exe. By the way, if this helps at all, my hard drive is a solid state drive, I also have a slave drive in there which does also have a copy of windows installed on it, (it was my old hard drive), I tried setting that as my primary boot and it boots into my old install of windows, before i got my solid state drive. Is there a way I can fix the startup by having access to it from an operating system instead of the recovery environment?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[gregrocker]

Unplug external, boot into System Recovery Options Command Line to Mark Partition Active on the 100mb System Reserved (preferred if you have it) or C partition. If it won't start run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times to repair or rewrite the System boot files.

Once it boots, plug in the external to Mark Partition as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums.
Then run a Disk Check. If it fails run Partition Wizard Check File System and Partition Wizard Partition surface test.

 

[patatesboy]

Would this help at all? When startup repair fails and I click on show problem details, it displays;

Problem signature 01: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem signature 02: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem signature 03: unknown
Problem signature 04: 21200146
Problem signature 05: ExternalMedia
Problem signature 06: 10
Problem signature 07: BadDriver
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1


I tried doing what you said, and its still the same thing. I have the bootable partition wizard, and I don't have the option to check file system, its greyed out

 

[gregrocker]

Did you change the Active flag back to where it was? Use Partition Wizard CD to have a picture of what you're doing. You can even post back a camera snap to help us help you better.

Rightclick System Reserved partition to Modify>Set to Active. If Win7 won't start run 3 Startup Repairs until it starts. If no SysReserved partition mark C Active and do same.

 

[patatesboy]

Here are the pictures of me setting partition active, and here is the ntbtlog

Sorry, I don't know why the photos came out upside down

 

[gregrocker]

Dude you posted an upside down screenshot and obscured the partition sizes so we can't tell what's used.

If that's the Win7 partition it should be System Active. Is that what it says on the partition? If it won't start then run Partition Wizard Rebuild MBR - Video Help.

If that doesn't start it then run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times.

Make sure the Win7 HD is set first to boot in BIOS setup, after the CD/DVD drive.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html

 

[patatesboy]

I did everything you mentioned, still same thing. It does not say system active on the partition, so I rebuilt mbr. I ran startup repair 3 separate times. Did that text file I posted have any information on what point the startup crashes?

 

[gregrocker]

Does it say System Active on partition now after running the 3 repairs?

If not start at the top and work through the steps which include everything possible for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start

 

[patatesboy]

no it does not say system active. I'm following the steps on the link you provided.

 

[gregrocker]

Then I'd next run SFC /SCANNOW Run in Command Prompt at Boot to see if repairing damaged System Files is enough to start it by marking Active and running the Repairs. But it's pretty grim if it won't even accept the Active flag or respond to repairs. Does it show an installation to Repair?

Can you browse in via PW CD Explore funciton to see your files and the Windows files are still onboard? You can rescue your files in Step 9 of tutorial.

Next I'd try the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows sequencing commands as given in the link in tutorial.

 

[patatesboy]

yeah my files are still there. I think I'm going to bite the bullet and reinstall windows. I've spent two full days trying to recover this very unfortunate problem.

 

[gregrocker]

Make the best of a bad situation and follow the steps closely in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7
to get a perfect install now, then after setup save it as a backup image and you'll never have to reinstall again.

 

[patatesboy]

Thank you for all your help, I really appreciate it!