Recovering the ability to boot into a win7 partition, on the 2nd drive

[starbase1]

Hello All,
It's not primarily a Win 7 problem, but as my main objective is to get access to Windows 7 again, I'm hoping you can help me.

Here's the situation.

My PC had several hard drives, and it came with Windows XP and Windows Vista partitions on the first hard drive.
At a later date, I installed Windows 7 onto the second hard drive, and when I booted up I had the choice of all three versions of windows, though I rapidly came to use Windows 7 almost all the time.

However, I have had a whole bunch of errors on that drive recently, and (not to my great surprise), it finally refused to boot up. I had backed up all the key files, but I'd really like to be able to boot into that windows 7 partition again. I use a LOT of different graphics software, and its a huge pain to reinstall and reactivate everything.

What I have tried already:

I tried changing the Bios to boot from each remaining hard drive (to be sure I had the right one), but none of them were bootable.

I tried booting off of my Windows 7 install disk, (64 bit), in the hope of seeing an option to repair the install, or repair the boot sector, (I think I saw something like this in the distant past?), but it only offers me the option of installing Windows 7 all over again.

I booted off a Linux live disk, and was able to check that the drive with Win7 on is still there, with what looks like all its files.

So, is it possible for me to boot into the existing windows 7 partition on that drive?

Thanks,
Nick

 

[gregrocker]

Work through the steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219533-troubleshooting-windows-7-failure-boot.html starting with the hardware tests.

Do you want to get rid of XP and/or Vista and make Win7 boot itself? Post back a screenshot from Vista http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html.

If you want to keep Win7 why did you allow it to go so bad without any effort made to repair it until its too late?

You'd be better off investing the time now to unplug all other HD's and do a perfect http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html#post1839164