MBR - Restore Windows 7 Master Boot Record

PsychoClown said:

in a nutshell. 300 gig hdd with win 7 on two separate partitions. win 7 installed on a ssd drive yesterday. once i get 7 on the ssd the way i want it i am going to wipe the 300 gig drive. i know the mbr for all 3 os's should be on the hdd. i just want to know what procedure(s) / steps i will need to take to update and or move my mbr to the ssd.

As you are installing a fresh 7 on your SSD you should NOT have to or need any procedure, because you should be able to (and should want to) have the SSD boot independently. You do that by installing 7 when the ONLY drive plugged in to the computer is the SSD.

Cheers!

iseeuu said:

PsychoClown said:

in a nutshell. 300 gig hdd with win 7 on two separate partitions. win 7 installed on a ssd drive yesterday. once i get 7 on the ssd the way i want it i am going to wipe the 300 gig drive. i know the mbr for all 3 os's should be on the hdd. i just want to know what procedure(s) / steps i will need to take to update and or move my mbr to the ssd.

As you are installing a fresh 7 on your SSD you should NOT have to or need any procedure, because you should be able to (and should want to) have the SSD boot independently. You do that by installing 7 when the ONLY drive plugged in to the computer is the SSD.

Cheers!

please reread my above post. i could not get to the install from dvd with the ssd only hooked up. i was forced to hook the os hdd back up. then i was able to install to the ssd.

PsychoClown said:

iseeuu said:

PsychoClown said:

in a nutshell. 300 gig hdd with win 7 on two separate partitions. win 7 installed on a ssd drive yesterday. once i get 7 on the ssd the way i want it i am going to wipe the 300 gig drive. i know the mbr for all 3 os's should be on the hdd. i just want to know what procedure(s) / steps i will need to take to update and or move my mbr to the ssd.

As you are installing a fresh 7 on your SSD you should NOT have to or need any procedure, because you should be able to (and should want to) have the SSD boot independently. You do that by installing 7 when the ONLY drive plugged in to the computer is the SSD.

Cheers!

please reread my above post. i could not get to the install from dvd with the ssd only hooked up. i was forced to hook the os hdd back up. then i was able to install to the ssd.

As I did not understand what you meant by "could not get to the install from dvd with the ssd only hooked up" in your first post, rereading it would not help me. Again I apologize ... could you please explain further what you mean by "could not get to the install from dvd with the ssd only hooked up"? Do you mean the DVD would not work? The DVD would not recognize the SSD? The DVD would not install to the SSD? The DVD is an upgrade and would not install where there was no previously installed OS? What error messages did you receive if any?

Cheers!

not to be rude, but there really is nothing complicated about my post. the dvd is a full version of 7 ultimate. i shut down the computer, hooked up the ssd drive, unhooked the os hdd, turned the computer on, went into the bios set the boot order dvd / ssd/ disabled, saved and exited, once it got past showing the hardware the cursor just sat there blinking. at this point i hit reset and tried it again. same thing, so this time i hit reset and went into the bios to check my settings. all fine. pop'ed out the 7 dvd, pop'ed in my partition wizard cd. it found the ssd with no problem. i wiped the drive with ones and zeros. then i exited and swapped disk and restart again. again the same thing. i turn the computer off then hooked the os hdd back up. i turned the computer back on and i was then able to boot from the dvd and install 7 to the ssd.

PsychoClown said:

not to be rude, but there really is nothing complicated about my post. the dvd is a full version of 7 ultimate. i shut down the computer, hooked up the ssd drive, unhooked the os hdd, turned the computer on, went into the bios set the boot order dvd / ssd/ disabled, saved and exited, once it got past showing the hardware the cursor just sat there blinking. at this point i hit reset and tried it again. same thing, so this time i hit reset and went into the bios to check my settings. all fine. pop'ed out the 7 dvd, pop'ed in my partition wizard cd. it found the ssd with no problem. i wiped the drive with ones and zeros. then i exited and swapped disk and restart again. again the same thing. i turn the computer off then hooked the os hdd back up. i turned the computer back on and i was then able to boot from the dvd and install 7 to the ssd.

Complicated or not, I do not think it to be rude to explain what happened in some detail ... especially for my benefit. Thank you very much!

I would suggest to you to read through this thread: SSD Tweaks and Optimizations in Windows 7 as it seems others have experienced similar results and evidently chose to create a hard drive image of their Windows 7 and restore that image to their SSD.

Thank you again!

nice thread. i will really have to read through it when i get the chance. however it does not address my problem. can i simply wipe the os hdd drive run the repair console and have it fix / create a mbr for the sdd on the sdd?

PsychoClown said:

nice thread. i will really have to read through it when i get the chance. however it does not address my problem. can i simply wipe the os hdd drive run the repair console and have it fix / create a mbr for the sdd on the sdd?

As I do not have an SSD to test, I cannot confirm or deny the answer to your question. As you are installing a fresh 7 now, I would suggest testing now with only the SSD, before you have lots of stuff to loose. I would suggest you mark the Windows 7 partition on the SSD "Active" from the Windows Disk Management utility, shut down the computer and unplug all hard drives but the SSD, then boot to the command prompt option of the 7 DVD (or CD) and execute: bootrec /rebuildbcd

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows

to ensure you have the proper files on the SSD for booting.

Also, you can start a thread in the "Hardware" section where other members who have experience with SSDs can offer their suggestions / comments on setting up a SSD with Windows 7.

Cheers!
Robert

alright waiting on a download to finish. once done will shut down, disconnect the os hdd and powerup and see what i get. thanks. will let you know.

just shut down the system, disconnect the os hdd, started the system, went into the bios and set the ssd as the 1st boot device, f8 to exit & save, once done listing all the hardware just sat at the cursor blinking. so yes the mbr for the drive is on the os hdd.

Hey there guys! Thank you very much for the great forum, even-though I guess I've ****ed up my Windows 7 completely.
So, I know that I seem to be quite dumb, but I am not Bill Gates :)

I had three partitions -
200 GB with my music, movies and documents (which i should not screw up)
20 GB where I have installed windows 7 32 bit
but then i decided to upgrade to 64 bit, so I installed a second wind 7 64 bit on a third partition. So far so good, until i formatted the second partition (with the win 32 bit) and my lovely machine turned me down (not surprising, duh)
I was prepared with an installation disc and went though all the steps till the 8th one (the start up repair did not work out) and got this:

The system partition was not found:
The requested system device cannot be found.

any ideas?