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Can't get Win7 to boot, drive letters changed


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#1
mailalan

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I can't get Windows 7 to boot up and I believe it's because my drive letters have changed. My operating system which was on drive C: is now drive E:. And what was drive F: is now drive D:. My DVD drive is now labeled F:. I believe that whats now the D: drive needs to be relabeled F: because that's where my Win7 user profile is stored.

 

diskpart.jpg

Here is what happened: The battery on my motherboard died causing my BIOS settings to be lost. This caused caused Intel Rapid Storage to drop two drives out of one of my RAID arrays.

In my setup I have two SSD drives in a RAID 1 array. This was my C: drive with the Windows 7 operating system.

I also had 4 spinning SATA drives in a RAID 10 array. This was my F: drive where I had placed my Win7 user profile.

When my BIOS settings were lost, Windows could not find the F: drive and would not boot up. Following the instructions here
(https://blog.jordanh...ctually-failed/) I recovered the lost RAID array that used to be my F: drive.

Before I realized what happened though, I had used Bootrec.exe in the Windows 7 Recovery Environment to run the FixMbr, /FixBoot, and /RebuildBcd commands. The first two said they worked but /RebuildBcd did not. I think doing that made things worse. So now I can't boot up.

So my old C: drive is now labeled as the E: drive.
And my old F: drive is now labeled as the D: drive.

I think I need to restore the correct drive letters as C: and F: before Windows will boot. Is that correct? Can anyone tell me how to fix this? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!
 


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#2
dmccoy

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Copy and paste the following into command line to find your correct drive. Then you may need to edit the bcd file correctly

bcdedit |find “osdevice”
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#3
mailalan

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It says osdevice partition=E:

 

I knew it was on the E: drive but I don't know how to edit the BCD file or correct this.

I also want to stress that when I built this machine I moved the windows user profile and app data folders off of the C: drive to the F: drive (thats what the drive letters originally were).


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#4
dmccoy

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I believe this will get you there

bcdboot c:\windows /s c:

Restart then make sure the c: drive is the first boot device in the bios. Please make a backup first using the following

bcdedit /export C:\data\BCDbackup

Edited by dmccoy, 28 January 2018 - 01:16 PM.

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#5
mailalan

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The backup command failed because the only thing on my C: drive is a temp folder. My windows OS files are on my E drive.

 

driveC.jpg

 

driveE.jpg


Edited by mailalan, 28 January 2018 - 01:36 PM.

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#6
dmccoy

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Yes you will have to change to the appropriate path. Which it looks like is e:

Cd e:\windows\system32
Then run the backup command

Edited by dmccoy, 28 January 2018 - 01:59 PM.

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#7
mailalan

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It won't allow me to change directory to the E: drive in the Win7 Recovery Environment. It stays on the X: drive.

 

Browsing through notepad to the E drive I see there is no "data" folder on the E drive.

 

Even if I changed the drive letter from E to C, wouldn't I still need to also change the drive letter from D to F since F was where I moved my Win7 user profile information to?


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#8
dmccoy

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Okay, I am not sure why you cannot access your e: drive. You first need to get the bootloader moved to the correct drive and then you can change your user file location by editing the register once in Windows. I recommend to download easybcd it is an easy to bcd editor

https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

You should still be able to use the free version but I may be wrong
https://www.techspot...12-easybcd.html

Edited by dmccoy, 28 January 2018 - 02:10 PM.

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#9
dmccoy

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Please run the this command bcdedit > 0 & notepad 0 and provide the output file or picture 


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#10
mailalan

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Thank you for all your help! Here's the result of that command:

 

notepad.jpg


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#11
dmccoy

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Youre welcome. Okay it looks like you boot manger is correct but we need to move your bootloader as well

bcdedit /set {DEFAULT.EN_US} device partition=c:
bcdedit /set {DEFAULT.EN_US} osdevice partition=c:
bcdedit /set {BOOTMGR.EN_US} device partition=c:
Close and restart

Edited by dmccoy, 28 January 2018 - 03:48 PM.

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#12
mailalan

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When I run the first command it says "An error occurred while attempting to reference the specified entry. The system cannot find the file specified."


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#13
dmccoy

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Are you running from c: just like you used to run the bcdedit command? Did you copy and paste the command one at a time and press enter?
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#14
dmccoy

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Try the following commands

bcdedit /set {default} device partition=C:
bcdedit /set {default} osdevice partition=C:
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#15
mailalan

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Since I can't boot up I am in the Windows 7 Recovery Environment, running from the Windows 7 installation disk. I am running the commands from what shows to be the X: drive. I cannot CD to any other drive. I did run just the first command when I got the error.

 

Running the last two commands you listed, both say they completed successfully.

 

After running those two I again tried the first command of the first three and received the same error.


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