[amw_drizz]

Hello Fellow Geeks,

I have an issue that I am trying to resolve. This does not involve the system in my signature, so here is the specs.

Biostar M7NCD Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2400+
2gb DDR PC3200 Ram
ATI HD 2400 Pro AGP Radeon
1x 80gb Seagate Hd (IDE)
1x 250gb Western Digital Hd (IDE)

Now I know this is classified as "crappy" system but for what it does it works good. This system has about 4+ years of hard life on it and still works (wish I could say that about some of my other systems of the same age)

Anyway the Problem, It has 2 hard drives from here on out I will refer to the sizes. The 80gb was orginally the primary with WinXP installed. It was fairly messed up and was due for a reinstall. I had Win7 HP so I loaded it on to the 250gb as the secondary at the time. Now after I grab all the files I realized I didn't set the 250gb as primary and I didn't unplug the 80gb during the install since I launched the install within WinXP. I got Win7 all installed customized, loaded the programs on to it and wanted to format the 80gb (still as primary) for extra space and to remove XP. I was intending to remove the drive all together to go into another system. So before I formatted the drive, I unplugged it and put the Win7 install disk back in since I knew that I would have to recreate the bootloader / bootmgr file for win7 to boot. Now here is the problem for the life of my I can not get the bootmgr installed on to the drive so I can get win7 back online without formatting since the license I have is for upgrade only and I already activated it (doh!)

I am at wits end right now, and waiting for my LiveCD of Linux Mint to load up so I can verify that the disk/partition is active and has the boot flag enabled (since I know this can cause issues when not set or if it is a secondary drive)

So far I have tried the following commands in the Windows 7 Repair console to get the bootmgr back, Esp since the Auto repair wizard failed since it still found the drive and installation of windows just couldn't repair automatically.

Commands I've tried are

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd

With Bootrec /rebuildbcd it found my windows Install and it still failed with the error of The requested system device cannot be found.

SO after some googling I tried the following to manually recreate the boot configuration data file

c: \boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force (works fine)

del c: \boot\bcd (asks if im sure i say yes, seems to work fine)

bcdedit /createstore c:\boot\bcd.temp(works fine)

bcdedit.exe /store c:\boot\bcd.temp /create {bootmgr} /d "windows boot manager" (says the entry {bootmgr} was successfully created)

bcdedit.exe /import c: \boot\bcd.temp (the STORE import operation has failed. The requested system device cannot be found.)

Then after reading else where I renamed the bcd.temp to bcd and tried

bcdedit.exe /set {bootmgr} device partition=C:

And I get the following error.

Quote

The boot configuration data store could not be opened.
The requested system device cannot be found.

After some further investigation I tried using Diskpart to make the partition active(which didn't help)

And now I am going to try gparted on my linux live distro to see if I can get it all set for the drive and try again.

So I am looking for some other options short of a reinstall or reinstalling the primary drive

TIA Jon

[happyrock]

try this...get to the command prompt and Type in bootcfg /scan and press enter

if it says total identified window installs: 1

Type in bootcfg /rebuild and press Enter...

It will identify your XP installation...type Y once you see this prompt.

You will be prompted to enter the load identifier...type in Microsoft XP Home Edition or Microsoft XP Professional depending on whichever version you have...press enter

You will be prompted to enter the load options...type in /fastdetect and press Enter

Type in exit and press Enter

[amw_drizz]

I Don't want to get back to XP.

When I pull the drive that contains XP which also contains the boot loader for both WinXP & Win7. So in turn I make the other drive the primary drive for the system and what I am trying to do is reinstall the bootloader for windows 7 so it can boot on its own with out the help from the drive that contained xp so I can format the system.

Still confused??? I don't know how to explain what I am trying to do, What I do not want to do is reinstall windows 7 since it is already activated, and it is classified as an upgrade only license!

[Dwight]

Hi look at this


http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1


Dwight

[happyrock]

ok...I think I understand what your trying to do...
Boot from the Vista/windows 7 DVD and on the screen where you’re prompted to Install now... select Repair your computer...then select startup repair

[amw_drizz]

happyrock, on Dec 27 2009, 08:24 AM, said:

ok...I think I understand what your trying to do...
Boot from the Vista/windows 7 DVD and on the screen where you’re prompted to Install now... select Repair your computer...then select startup repair

That fails, then that is when I used the command prompt er um recovery console what ever you wish to call it from the windows 7 install disk.

I am going to try easybcd to see if it will create the boot loader on the drive or not.