Windows 7 boot problems

[iMark]

Hi there! I hope you can help me with this, it's driving me mad!

I installed Windows 7 onto a secondary hard drive a few months ago from an ISO downloaded from Microsoft, using a virtual disk drive on an XP installation to do so (I never buy writable DVD's, so this was and still is not an option for me at the moment). The problem I have now, is that I have recently cleared my old hard drive (Occupied by XP) and attempted to format the disk. Doing so from Windows 7 (Disk manager) gave me problems, in that it was telling me I could not delete partitions on/format an active drive, but Google soon helped me to activate and deactivate the appropriate drives through CMD. Upon restarting the computer however, I found that I was unable to boot from the hard drive containing my Windows 7 OS. Not only that, but I was unable to boot back into my old XP OS on the old hard drive, due it being an inactive drive (or so I assume).

I reinstalled XP on my old drive after formatting it, and that enabled me to Google for more solutions. Finally, I found a download for the Windows 7 repair disk. After burning it onto a CD and multiple reboots from using the tools included, it finally told me that all boot errors had been fixed.

Long story short.. I am now back in Windows 7, but only after booting from my XP drive again (even AFTER it had been formatted).

What is going on?! Why can't I boot Windows 7 from the hard drive it is installed on? How can I merge the boot files I need onto this drive? Ideally I would like all my spare hard drives clean of clutter, and just use them as extra storage. I am completely unaware of the reasoning behind the boot files being located on another disk.

Not only that, but I now seem to be unable to boot into windows XP on the other drive now, as it automatically logs me into Windows 7, but that is not a problem, as I would like to get rid of that OS from the drive anyway.

What can I do?

[bludgard]

Hi,iMark.

I would suggest a complete clean-all and format with diskpart command on your main HD.This will eliminate everything on disk and write 0's and 1's for a perfectly clean disk to install on.

Boot DVD Repair Console or Repair CD,press Shift+F10 at first screen or click through to Recovery Tools list to open Command Prompt:

Type:

diskpart

list disk

select disk # (The value of selected disk will replace #)

clean all

create partition primary

select partition 1

active

format

assign

exit

This takes quite a bit of time,but ensures a clean installation of your OS.

I hope I understood your dilemma.I would hate to be posting in ignorance. B)