Repair Install

Been trying to find exactly how to fix this and the answer may be in this thread, but at 176 pages and getting brain fog after a few pages in from looking everywhere else, I'm going to try to lay out the problem here.

Built the computer ~5 years ago and used an OEM Windows 7 Home Premium from Newegg. A few months ago a string of problems starting with a video card that died ended up with windows being damaged from removal tools a shop used to check for infections and such (All they found where some tool bars on explore which I never used as I use Firefox). I had 2 160Gb drives (1 with os and the other added after right after install for games) and a 640 for backups. The 160 for games also started dying and was replaced with another used 160 partly as a hold over.

I got a new Samsung 850 Pro 512Gb SSD to replace the OS drive and upgraded from 8 to 16Gb of ram. Then Did a clean install of windows to the SSD. After windows finished, I noticed windows didn't say anything about creating that 100Mb partition like it did the first time. I aslo noticed the 640Gb (which had an a windows backup from before the reinstall) was not showing up. We didn't know why at the time, but added a drive letter. I put the old OS drive an a USB case and copied over data files, storage folders, etc.. and got most everything reinstalled.

I got Crash Plan for creating remote backups the the Crash Plan servers and then got Macrium to use for full image backups. The plan was to also have Crash Plan keep backups of the image backups to provide remote storage of them and to keep them back farther then I could do locally. That is when I found out why the 640 didn't show up in the drive list.

I selected backup windows in Macrium and it wanted to include that 640Gb drive. We didn't remove the other drives and windows made the 640 the boot and because it was already partitioned with data on it, windows made the whole drive hidden .

I want the C: drive (SSD) to be the boot so the os drive is the boot drive. I may make the 640 my extra space and put in another drive for local backups. I don't want to worry about some point down the road, removing a hard drive and the system no longer boots because boot was in the wrong place. I have been trying to sort out how to make C: the boot drive. In the good old dos days, we just did something like "sys c:". I've been told just remove the hard drives install from the DVD and do a repair. In researching, I'm seeing stuff about first settings on the boot drive to make it primary, using install disk that already have SP1 on it, and so on. And on a sort of side note, I thought windows would check for updates right after the install and thought I was done, but the next it wanted to do SP1 and other stuff and then again the following day SP1 again and a few hours after that 130 critical and 60 important totalling over 700Mb even though SP1 had a new release date of 2014. I didn't know I could have downloaded a new updated install image with SP1 and the other junk. Also, Windows is saying I the motherboard and onboard graphics drivers need to be updated even though I got them from the Nvidia web site few days before the clean install. I'm rambling because I hate windows.

Thanks, I'll try when I get some more free time. I forgot to say, I found a hidden folder on E: called boot and a hidden file called bootmgr. These are not on C:. So I'm guessing the windows install disk will be needed to fix this. But, can I just use my original disk? or do I need to get one of the iso's with SP1 and make a new Install/DVD to do the fix? Oh, and do I still need to disconect the other drives to run the repair? Or will making c: the active be enough?

Typical to how computer things have been going for me, it didn't go as expected... I changed the active partitions which went as expected. Then put the DVD in and autorun came up with option to run the exe or view folder. I went with run and got a window that said install with no other options. So I closed that and then did a reboot instead. Again, it came up with an install window asking for language, etc.. I took a chance and went with next and found the repair option. It did it's thing and said something about an error with the partition table which it fixed. I took out the DVD and clicked finish and windows did come back up. Only it remarked the 640Gb E: as active and now the drives have all moved in th emanager list which I thought was fixed to which sata plug they are in. Drive D: is now Disk 0, Drive C: (my SSD os drive) is now Disk 1, and the 640 drive E: is now Disk 2. Both C: and E: are now listed as active. It did not add a boot folder or the file "bootmgr" to the C: drive. They are still only on E: (I unchecked the hide system files to check on this.) The rest of the info about the drives in disk management is the same

Sorry Mr Grim - but I still can't get my themes back!
Nice try though.

Having used a W7HP Upgrade disc on a (I think) XP x64 as the prior OS, I've had some problems over the years that I'd been reluctant to try this on but today I said "Enough!" and gave it a shot:

1. Having made a USB key with the tut's referenced tool, I first encountered the 0x80070241 error at about the 9% or 253MB mark of the Windows file copy (first line of many). After many more tries, I found a DVD that I'd made long ago of the X17-58997.iso which is W7HP SP1 x64, and amazingly it worked. How the USB stick was corrupt remains a mystery.

2. Upon arriving at the desktop, Windows said "Not genuine!" and after some fiddling with WindowsActivationUpdate.exe my browser took me to a page where MS wanted me to buy W7HP for $109!!! No thank you!!! But when I opened instead the System control panel and clicked "Is this genuine" or whatever it eventually activated me, after re-entering my Product Key, and it appears "problem solved'.

3. Next I ran sfc /scannow which previously was unrepairably corrupt somehow, and it said all was good.

Now I'm on the installation of number 26 of 118 Windows Updates but thankfully at least I have WSUS so didn't have to re-download all of them.

Thanks Brink for the tutorial--in the end it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd anticipated, though I did think when MS wanted $109 from me that I might have to re-image my SSD!!!