Arrested Development Clan

Ok so first my setup:

I have 3 operation systems;
hard drive one (1.5 TB) has vista and windows 7
hard drive two (250 GB) has vista (my old version)

So now i want to remove my old drive the 250 gb. However what happens when I remove the second hard drive is that neither the windows vista or 7 boots on hard drive one.

It says boot failure or something of that nature and wants me to use the windows boot disc, so I tried that and then used system restore and attempted to repair the startup but it didn't do anything.

Also when I use the restore option it doesn't list my hard drive or the operation systems to actually check, but they are there because if i go to load drivers I can access the hard drive and all the files.

So it appears as though the windows boot manager is only on hard drive two but I don't know how to get in on the other drive.

oh and when i only have hard drive two connected the boot manager come up and still lists all 3 operating systems

Is it possible to put your data onto one or the other and then re-format and re-install on one of them or is that too much hassle?

I have never tried to do that and did not know you could have a boot manager on your secondary drive, but I guess if you installed Vista on your new drive while your other drive was installed, then Windows must have gotten confused.

Can you unhook the 250 and boot from the CD and load the newer install of Vista?

reformat = not an option

and no, when I unhook the 250 and boot from the cd it just goes into the install options or the repair options, whichever I choose. But under repair options when I try to repair the startup it doesn't even list the vista or 7 that are on the hard drive. Then there is an option that says if nothing shows up to install drivers for the hard drive but that doesn't make any sense nor do I have any drivers for the hard drive.


is there another place that has boot options other than the system configuration?

Your MBR or master boot record is on the 250 gig HD. You need to build a new MBR on your 1.5 TB and make sure it's Master on your motherboard and on the dipswitches in the back. Is it a SATA? If it is, make sure you load it as your primary HD. Hope this helps!

right but i did not know how to build a new mbr and yes they are both sata

but I figured it out.

first i used the vista boot cd and got into command prompt and used the command boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force
and then i tried to rebuild the bcd data using bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd
but that didn't work because it said element not found
so I had to then activate my partitions
so i got back into command prompt and used diskpart
then used select disk 0
then select partition 1
then I typed active
and that set those to active and restarted
this allowed the vista boot cd to then see the partitions
and i was then able to use the repair startup feature
which resetup the boot manager
and then it works!!

... this is like a totally different language to me, how do you know this crap?!?!?!

Good job fixing it though, I know it was really pissing you off

Thanks Doege! You're a genius!

I had this problem after cleaning my computer this weekend and after following your instructions exactly, I fixed it!

crap I hope that doesn't happen to me if my MBR gets screwed up I have 5 HDDs to Tend to