Help Pfft....bootloader

[smurkin]

Lo chaps.

Some advice needed here. Had a bit of a disaster - lost my c drive (RAID stripe with my OS and data on it) - fortunately most of the data was already backed up. So I did this..

I bought new 2Tb replacement drive. Dug out an old drive with a image of vista on it. Plugged in both drives in and installed windows 7 home on the new clean drive using my genuine MS instalation DVD (its an upgrade only, hence I needed the old vista drive in) - and it all works......until......

I removed the vista drive and the PC wont boot! It seems my new Windows 7 drive isn't bootable - it must have been running from the vista boot loader

How can I make my nice new drive bootable? I was wondering if the repair function on the instalation disk could do the repair (without messing up my nice clean operating system and installed programs)??

Thanks

 

[Zenith.UK]

Sounds like you need to reset the bootloader and MBR.
In the old days this would be to get into the Recovery Console on your Windows installer disc, FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. Since Vista it's in the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE).

Possible approaches with Win7...

Repair the MBR to restore Windows 7 to your Multiboot Options
System Recovery Options - Windows 7 Forums
System Repair Disc - Create - Windows 7 Forums
Improved Recovery Options in Windows 7 - Windows Live Community

 

[smurkin]

Thans Zenith - I had a good read - my OS drive was clearly showing as boot, but not system, therefore no bootloader - I tried the BCDEDIT - but it did not work even through it copied the files - so I used the windows 7 instalation disk - going for the restore > startup repair - Win! Works fine now.

My next question - this WD caviar Green drive is a bit slow compared to my old striped RAID - so I'm going to buy an SSD for running the system

Anyone now how to tranfer the OS accross to a new drive?

 

[TdC]

tbh I never transfer, always fresh install. that said, if you have an esata enclosure or something, you could attach the ssh, and use a linux to dup the contents across. Mac has a program called superduper for that iirc. don't know what windows has for it but I'm sure there are resources available.