Win 7 No Longer Working?

Schnooker

Member
Hi, and may I say what a relief/pleasure finding this site has been..
First time poster, please be gentle. Oh, and I'm not very proficient with fixing computers but over the last seven days or so, I've given it my best shot - but to no avail!
Here's where I am:
About a week ago, my (first build) system decided to give me a 'BOOTMGR IS MISSING' error.
I had Win 7 installed in a RAID0 config on 2 Crucial RealSSD c300 drives, and they're connected to and EVGA SR-2 motherboard.
Upon notification of the bootmgr error, I imediately proceeded to load my original Win 7 disc and attempt a 'startup repair'. The disc could not find an OS installation.
I then scurried the web and discovered all the command line instructions for an alternative to 'startup repair' -

bootrec.exe /fixmbr bootsect.exe
bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old bootrec /rebuildbcd /nt60 all /force - among many others; nothing worked!
I either got continual errors or 'unable to proceed' replies. Forgive me if this is not exactly
correct as all this took place many days ago and my brain is now a little fuzzy.
After many hours trying to ammend this, I finally decided to call it quits and do a fresh install.
This was LONG before I found out here that I probably could have transferred everything with
Ubuntu.
Anyway, upon trying to wipe my SSD's with Active Kill Disk, I nooticed one of the drives took
forever to make it through the format in AKD. I then started to think it was a hardware
failure on one of my SSD's, so when AKD finally did manage to complete it's format, I then ran a CHKDSK on both drives;
should have also done this earlier, I know), but CHKDSK came out with no error messages.
After everything looked to be ok with the SSD's, I then started thinking that maybe there was a virus of some sort, and it's then that I found
'Free Bootable Partition Manager' ISO and I ran a sweep to check the disc were ok in there - they were!
I then went and erased both SSD's and setup a new partition for Win7.
I then went to install Win7 and everything went pretty smoothly (albeit a lot slower), prior to this
I had re-setup both SSD's in RAID0 with a strip of 16 - and off Win 7 went - slowly.
Once installed, everything looked to be ok, and I then proceeded to load all the new drivers/BIOS update/Windows updates that were available.
However, after a restart from Windows Update, my system froze on the desktop shortly after (maybe
2 minutes after). I then ran the repair disc from here and it showed there was a problem but it didn't know how to fix it.
I then tried to boot into safe mode but nothing happened when I pressed the F8 key. It just hung there doing nothing.
So, I shut down power, waited a few minutes, turned the power back on, and everything worked fine, until I tried to load
BitDefender and then it froze one more time.
I went through turning off the power button and loading everything again - once more, everything was fine but the same
thing happened when I tried to install Windows Updates.
I'm really thinking I have a very nasty virus, but how could this be after all my HD's have been formatted?
I did manage to get Windows Security Essentials installed + completely updated (eventually),
and even ran a full scan in safe mode, but no infections could be found.
I'm now sitting here waiting for a 3TB WD drive to finish erasing any partition that was on there,
just to make sure no infections still loomed.

Can anyone help me with any of this?

Many thanks.
Stephen




Addendum:

I just want to add a little extra here as nobody seems to know what to do/I would like..
I'm just about to install Win7 and the problems I've been having are that once previously installed, W7 freezes after about 2 minutes or so of any kind of operation from me?
Why would it do this? If everything has been checked, hardware and software wise, what could possibly cause Windows to freeze on a newly formatted and partitioned HD?
Is there something I've overlooked here or could this be a virus of some sorts.

Please, if you can, please help me with this.

Stephen
 
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Have you tried Installing W7 on one SSD, all your apps on the other, and junking the idea of RAID ?
The only reason I can think of why a (full) format and clean install of any OS should fail would be hardware related.
No malware can survive the scorched earth policy of format and reinstall unless you're booting via another location which didn't get formatted.
I have no experience with RAID to advise you. All my systems have been built using JBOD architecture, and whilst my spinning platters are the low-score in the WEI on my h/w, the system is still fairly nippy for a 4 1/2 year old, and could be boosted to all sevens with a couple of SSDs replacing the OS and apps on HDD.
Since it only takes 1/2 hour to install W7 from scratch (especially if you save a copy of Windows\System32\DriverStore on a flashdrive and use it to bring all the drivers up to par rather than trawling the net for them another time) it might well be worth a try to see if my guess of RAID being involved is right or wrong.
 
Hi, Terry, and thanks for the reply.
I will definitely give your way of things a spin tonight and report back.

Stephen

Addendum:

Hi, Terry, just one more thing, where do I locate: Windows\System32\DriverStore
Sorry for my lack of knowledge.

Stephen
 
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Hi.
Just wanted to thank you for helping me out.
Everything is now up and running beautifully, albeit without RAID0, but who needs all that crazy tecky stuff anyways..
I'm still convinced I had a very severe case of the digital herpes, but I guess we'll never know for sure?
What I do know is, that my machine was running back to normal after (and only after) I had wiped all SSD's & HDD's with a 7-pass all zero blitz. Took me twelve hours to wait for a WD 3TB HD to be thoroughly scrubbed!
Anyway, thanks once more, and especially thanks for the Partition ISO you guys have here on this fine site. I definitely know that thing did the trick!

Have a nice weekend.
Stephen
 
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