Change Boot drive - didn't work

tristanz

Member
Hi
I previously posted this in response to another thread, but that may not have been the right thing to do. It was previously posted here.

I had Vista on one physical drive, and installed Win 7 to a second physical drive, stupidly not thinking about the implications of that. I now want to remove the drive with Vista on it. With both drives connected, I get a boot menu and can choose Vista or Win7.

I have performed the Change Boot Drive activity using EasyBCD from within Win7, but then on booting with only the Win7 drive connected, I receive "A Disk error has occurred. File Not Found. Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to reboot"

I have also tried "Recreate/Repair boot files" but this made no discernible difference.

The Windows automatic repair tells me there is no problem, and the from the command line bootrec/ scanos tells me that zero operating systems were found (with only the Win7 disk attached.

I have also tried bootsect /nt60 sys /force (didn't work without the /force)

Can anyone help me get to a point that I can boot using only the Win7 drive without reinstalling?

Thanks in advance for your help.
Tristan
 
Please post a Disk Management screenshot.
When you were prompted for a location for "change boot drive", did you quote the Windows 7 disk letter, and is it a primary partition ? (logical drives are not bootable)
 
Hi Terry
Thanks for responding.
I've added a disk management screenshot as an attachment to this post.
Yes, when I changed the boot drive, I selected the Win7 disk as the target.
Tristan
 

Attachments

  • DiskManagement.PNG
    DiskManagement.PNG
    49.9 KB · Views: 9
Did change boot drive to F give an error message or complete normally ?
After doing the "change..." to a different HDD, you will also need to alter the BIOS to boot from the new HDD instead of the old one. (the files are copied, so the originals are still untouched and will remain in use if the boot sequence isn't altered.
 
Hi Terry
The change didn't report any problems.
After that (and every time after I've tried something new) I physically disconnect the Vista disk and check the Win7 disk is the boot drive in the BIOS. That's when I get the error message.
Tristan
 
What if you leave Vista connected, but switch the BIOS sequence ?
If these are IDE drives, disconnecting the master and trying to boot the slave will fail unless you also rejumper the drive.
 
Last edited:
Hi Terry

They are both SATA discs. I just tried leaving Vista connected but switching the boot priority, but I still get the 'A disk error has occurred message' the same as when Vista is disconnected.
Are there any diagnostic programs I can run to help provide some more information? I'm generally pretty good with troubleshooting PCs - it kept me fed and clothed while I was at uni - so I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty if it will assist in figuring out what's going on.
Really appreciate your expertise with this issue, thanks.

Tristan
 
If Easy has done the job, you should find a \boot folder (containing the BCD) and a bootmgr file in the root of the target partition, which will also now be "active" if it wasn't already.
They're super-hidden so you'll need folder options set thus to see them
 
Hi Terry
Yes, I can see the /Boot folder, and there is a bootmgr file present too on the target disk. Those files are also present on the Vista drive, although many of the files have different Last Modified dates between Vista/Win7, not sure of this is relevant. The Win7 drive also has BCDbackup0001 in the Boot folder, which is the only file not present on the Vista drive.
Tristan
 
Hi Terry
They've been around for a little while now - I think I got them in about 2005! I've always preferred to use one small fast disk for the OS, and others for storage. I have a 250gb NAS (which needs upgrading) and a 320gb disk for recorded tv shows and they both work fine for all my storage.
Do you think there's an actual physical disk error given the age of the disk? Should I try cloning the Win7 disk?
Tristan
 
Either of the EasyBCD "change boot ..." or the DVD "startup repair" should have done what you need without a problem. It's a regular situation, resolved here many times before.
Since you have tried both methods without success (you did do "startup repair" three times ? It's got several things to fix and only does one per pass), then I assume that you have an underlying problem.
Normally those would be an undeclared logical drive (not your case), A RAID configuration (you haven't mentioned one), or a corrupt boot sector on the target drive.

I would
a) do "startup repair" 3 times to let MS create a new boot for you, and if that still doesn't result in a booting W7 drive,
b) run chksdk /r against the W7 partition, to see if it can find bad blocks in the boot sector and remove them from use.
 
Hi Terry
Yes, I had (tried) to run Startup Repair several times, although since using EasyBCD it just says that it can't find a problem and to remove any cameras or music players and reboot. The 'Root Cause' in the detailed info says "Boot status indicates that the OS loaded successfully" which suggests to me that these 'Disk read errors' I'm getting aren't even progressing far enough in to the loading sequence to register that the OS failed to load. Should I be focusing on why Windows Startup repair won't run?

chkdsk /r yields no errors at all.

I'm not sure if it could have caused a problem, but after first installing EasyBCD and playing with the program, if I had clicked 'Install BCD' or 'Write MBR' on the bootloader setup screen could this cause any of what we're seeing? I don't think I did, but it was a while ago now and in looking through the program today they strike me as possible actions of a desperate man!

Are there any options to delete files & settings (ie the /boot folder) and start again?
Tristan
 
Back
Top