Endless Boot Issues

[robwilkie]

Hi there, I'm having a lot of different boot issues with my computer and was hoping you could help.

I used to have dual OS, one hard drive with Windows 7 64x bit (I'll refer to this one as HDD1) and another with Windows 7 32x bit (and refer to this one as HDD2) it's also worth mentioning a long time ago I had Linux Mint running on HDD1. I was running off HDD2 before I installed 64x on HDD1 and I realised the other day it had been a year or so since I made the switch and HDD2 was sat there doing nothing so I decided to format.

This is where my problem started.

I was having issues formatting HDD2, Windows was saying that it was in use, so I loaded up my Linux live disk to format it. That seemed to work fine but when I reboot my pc to get back on Windows, I started getting an error (booting using HDD1) saying "Bootmgr is Missing press ctrl+alt+del to restart" I tried to then repair my bootmgr with my Windows 7 disc. I did everything I could there to no avail.

I thought, seeing as I now have a clean hard drive (HDD2) I may as well install Windows 7 64x onto it, I did that and all seemed to go well except for when it restarted, it then said (booting using HDD1 still) "Error: Unknown filesystem - grub rescue>". I'm not sure why putting Windows 7 on HDD2 changed it. After this I tried booting up the Windows 7 disc again, it went on to carry on installing Windows 7 (I'd forgot it likes to reboot then carry on) eventually Windows 7 was installed on HDD2.

I have since tried many more things to get HDD1 to boot normally. I have tried changing hard drive boot priority in bios, when HDD1 tries to boot I get the grub error, when HDD2 tries to boot I get the bootmgr is missing error. I have also used EasyBCD on both hard drives, that didn't help.

Right now there is only one way I can get my computer to boot. And that is to have the Windows 7 disc in my DVD drive with disc drive priority above hard drive on the boot list in my bios and to let it skip the boot from disc. If I have it in but booting from hard drive first I get errors. If it skips past "press any key to boot from disc" it then goes to the normal Windows boot OS selection menu and I'm able to start up either hard drive.

Quite frankly I am stumped on why it will boot when it skips past the disc boot and have no idea on how to rectify this. I really don't want to have to format both hard drives again and start from scratch to fix this and I'd rather not need to leave my disc in constantly and have my PC boot this way. Ideally, when the boot is working as it should using HDD1 I'd like to format HDD2.

I really hope I have explained my situation well enough for someone to be able to help and any help will be appreciated, thanks for your time reading this long post.

Rob.

[-pops-]

Have you tried a Low Level Format?

The technique of doing this varies slightly with the make and model of drive. Look on the manufacturers website for software to do this and the procedural details.

A low level format will remove all traces of previous installations, replacing them with zeros. Your drive should then be equivalent to "factory fresh".