2 disks, 2 OS, cant find MBR, iam snookered

Hello folks, ive been through this helpful site before, usually found answers to my problems , but alas on this ocassion ive really worked myself into a corner and i need some advice to maintain my sanity as my computer and the net have becomes my friends ...

started off with 1 hard disk (C) with XP installed, later added another HD (D) and installed Win 7, dual boot screen on startup no worries..

decided i didnt need XP anymore and just wanted to use disk (C) for game files and movies, so booted up with win7 installation disk and formatted C

then, it wouldnt boot up so repaired with win7 install disk and got back on (D)Win7

now i just want to make D win7 my only operating system as it all setup and good,( i have backed up D win7 files with a seagate mememo instant backup) and use C drive just as file storage

how i can achieve this i dont know , ive spent best part of the day on this and wont shut my computer down in case it wont start again
sorry for my hopelessness but i would be most grateful for any help here thanks

 

Hi,
I would think Win7 repair would have fixed the problem. Once you deleted XP and then used the Win7 disc to repair startup problems, it should have seen that Win7 was the only OS and made appropriate changes (permanently).

If you want I could take a lot at your boot files to see if they look correct but I can't really guarantee that I can read them accurately.

Try going to Start then typing in cmd when cmd.exe appears in the list of Search results, right-click it and select Run as Administrator. In the cmd window type/copy the following command
bcdedit > C:\bcdfile.txt
and attach the file to your next post. Or just paste the info into your post.

 

Don't want to get in the way of sach2 helping you here but a little explanation might help. Basically you have fallen foul of the utterly daft dual booting system used ONLY by Microsoft, where the booting files HAVE to be on drive C. It's okay for the rest of your OS to be on D but the boot files - bootmgr and a few others - must remain on C.

It's ugly, it's inconvenient, but unless you do a clean install of 7 it's gonna stay that way.

 

welcomed advice thanks, so ill paste this bcdedit thing-a-me-bob and then try a re-start ..
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=C:
path \bootmgr
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
default {current}
displayorder {current}
timeout 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {current}
device partition=D:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7 Ultimate (recovered)
locale en-US
recoverysequence {9fdab764-ae78-11e1-ab0b-b16a1be88a08}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=D:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {f7289226-ade6-11e1-9c09-806e6f6e6963}
usefirmwarepcisettings No
bootlog No
sos No

 

I'm afraid I am not that good at deciphering the BCD. The bootloader section is pointing to your D: drive which looks fine. But it says the bootmgr is on C: which doesn't make sense since you formatted that drive.

Earthling may be holding the key piece of information. When you ran Startup Repair using the Win7 disc it may have put a copy of the boot files on the C: drive.

My guess right now would be that with both HD installed it should boot up with no problems. If you have a problem you can just boot from the Win7 DVD and choose repair rather than installation. It should be able to get you back into Win7 as it did before. The automatic repair it suggests should work fine.

If it does boot up with no problem and not needing the DVD then I would be curious what happens if you unplug the C: HD? Does it still get into Windows or does it give you a bootmgr is missing error? It would be useful for you to do the test so that you would know if removing the C: HD might cause problems with booting.

 

ok computer re-starts no worries there .. but after disconnecting C Drive computer will not boot up ,
on-screen message reads " NTLDR is missing press alt, shift del to restart"
so i tried again this time with Win7 install dvd but no, message was like 'there has been a drive disconnected please reconnect and try again' and i did and it booted up properly into win7

is there any way i can get the boot manager from C onto D drive
meanwhile i must research this NTLDR

 

As I said, Windows boot files ALWAYS have to reside on C. I've been through this process successfully myself, when I had XP on the first partition (C), and Vista on the second (D) and wanted to remove XP. However it is anything but a simple operation and it's not really practical to attempt it through q&a in a forum such as this, possibly with a 5 hour or so time difference.

For the time being you will just have to live with it or reinstall 7, unless someone in your time zone pops in and takes over.

 

@sach2

Yes, that's exactly what happened

 

ok no worries Earthling, i dont expect unpractical never-ending solutions
Thank you for your help and advice, i have learnt from it

 

Yes, I've been thinking about it and the problem is that Win7 has a drive letter of D:. I usually dual install with only one HD attached at a time so that each installation is considered C:. It makes it simpler if there is a problem with a particular HD.

You will be fine working the way you are. If the data/C: HD were to go bad you could still fix the Win7 boot files but it might be a bit complicated. I'm thinking of resizing your current D: drive to create a 100mb partition in the space before the large D: partition. Then removing the extra HD and booting from the DVD and getting it to write the boot files to that new partition. It should work but it would be some trial and error to get the exact process.

I'm just working through the steps in my mind, not that you have to complete them. Are your HD SATA interface or IDE?

 

I've been thinking too while out, and reading a bit as well after returning. If you physically disconnect your original drive and then run the repair from your Win 7 CD three times it seems it will create the boot manager files for you, but it does need running three times. If that works you can re-attach the original drive and format it from Win 7, which will now be C. If your drives are IDE you would need to reset the master/slave jumpers on the drives but hopefully they are SATA.

Let us know how you get on.

 

If you intend giving this a shot then after running recovery and before rebooting into Windows, you will need to change the boot order in your BIOS to put the new drive ahead of the old.