Ok, here is my question and problem. I have two HDDs, one running Windows 7 and the other Windows XP. I want to remove the HDD with XP on it. When I do that my system fails to load anything and just sits on Loading DMI data when system is booted. If I disconnect the HDD with Windows 7 on it, system boots to Windows XP perfectly fine, minus still having to select the OS out of the dual-boot screen. I've tried switch SATA cables around with no dice. It seems that the drive with XP on it has to be the drive thats accessed first. So how do I go about making my W7 HDD primary drive with zero need for my Windows XP HDD to be connected in-order to boot from the HDD? HDDs are both Western Digitals, W7 on my 320GB and XP on my 160GB. Ya, I know this sounds rather noobish, but I've never done this before, and the fact i would have figure this would be easier to do since they are both SATA HDDs.
bios should have boot order.. else switch the cables around and put the win 7 drive on the primary controller
The boot order should have been changed automatically. The Windows 7 install probably put start up files on the "C' drive, and set up the multi boot that way. I *think* you can use the bcdedit command in the recovery console you can boot to from the CD to build that info.
you would have thought that it would be as easy as switching cables or bios options, sadly in the bios even with Win 7 on the master cable versus slave, i had to adjust in the bios the slave to be read first in-order to get anywhere. I read somewhere that the way Microsoft updated the boot system is that "C" is controlled differently between Vista/7 and XP. I have an odd feeling that Windows 7 placed the start-up files as you said onto my XP HDD due to this. Now I will admit that when i switched cables around Windows 7 changed some setting and forces me to restart after boot-up. No idea what it did. After quick tests, i determined nothing, but who knows. in bcdedit, what commands do i use? I did a quick look under command prompt but im not sure what to do exactly.
hmm you can change the boot.ini on the xp drive thats primary.. see if that works.. look for rdisk(0) and change it to 1 http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000492.htm
daft as this might sound , win7 has put the boot loader onto the xp disk, vista does it as well if you've got to disks fitted, it'll even do it if you've got 1 disk with a partition on it, the reason xp boots ok is because it still has it's own bootloader on the same disk, download a prog called easy bcd, get it to rewrite the bootloader on to the win7 disk, it's dead easy to do, just 1 of those silly little annoying probs thats a nightmare to solve....good luck m8 keep us posted on how your getting on
thanks for the thought, but still nothing. It acts like it cleared all bootloaders and installed one for Windows Vista but upon restart all goes back to the way it was before. Only unique thing that changed between before and now is that the DMI data locating seems to finally decide to fail and go to "Boot from CD/DVD" which I've laughably threw my Windows 7 Pro disc in and it just sits on the blue Win7, install??, screen after it says loading windows 7. This has to be the stupidest issue I've ever seen come out of Windows in a while. Ok, stupid question if this removal of HDD fails. Do I have enough power to actually run a GTX470 in my system without straining my PSU much. Processor: AMD 7750BE OCed to 3.1GHz Current GPUs: 9600GT and 8400GS HDDs: Two ODDs: Two DVD + Blu-ray Case NZXT Tempest w/6 fans Other cooling: Zalman CPU Cooler and PCI slot cooler. PSU: 700w ABS
once you've booted disconnect the xp disk and then use easy bdc to remove all entries then enter the 1's that you need and tell it to rewrite the mrb, dont forget to click save or it'll revert to previous settings, in answer to your stupid question.....Yes...lol
ok either I didnt do exactly as you just said, or this failed. Here is a quick step by step of what i did. 1. disconnected SATA from 2nd HDD 2. started easybcd 3. went to add/remove entries 4. under manage bootloader clicked write MBR 5. checked under settings to see that there was only one option, there was. Windows Vista but under drive X:\? 6. Under add/remove entries I deleted both W7 and XP, added W7 with Vista loader (since they are the same) restarted PC 7. was prompted by system boot failure. please insert disc. 8. cursed some then shut desktop off inserted SATA back into other HDD. 9. here I am posting here with reverted settings. What did I do wrong here?
does the pc boot with the recovery disc in the drive? if so go into the bios and change the order of the H/D's...eg the xp disk showing as the 1'st boot device or visa versa...dont forget to leave both disks connected
problem solved, I ran the start-up recovery. It found a very interesting error in how the original install formatted the partition on the drive. thanks for the help.
OOps, didn't see the resolution. but this info might still be useful. OK, here is some info on the voodoo of booting a system. It's pretty technical, so sorry if it's hard to follow. At the end of POST, the system is in 16 bit real mode. That means it can address 1 meg of ram, and is limited to acting mostly like an 8086. The OS is mostly dependant on platfrom firmware (BIOS in this case) for most things. Because of the histroy of SCSI controllers, it is pretty much dependent on the BIOS. Most disk services are provided through a software intterupt mechanism using "interrupt 13h" or simply int 13. Int13 needed to handle more than one drive so it takes a parameter called the 'disk handle'. This is used to tell if the drive is a floppy or hard drive as well as which floppy or hard drive. The A: drive will have handle 00h, and c: will have handle 80h. This is always the case. When you change the boot order, you change which drive gets handle 80h. Something similar happens for 'boot failover' to the next hard drive if the first hard drive in the order is not bootable. At the end of POST, BIOS will also use handle 80h to locate the boot sector ont he drive, copy it to memory location 0000h:7c00h then pass control to it via int 19h. What it sounds like is going on is that the Windows 7 CD queried int 13 for drive information, found your XP drvie at handle 80, found your other drive at handle 81, placed it's boot sector on handle 80 and set it up to run the XP boot loader on handle 80, or the 7 boot loader on handle 81. But there is not a boot loader on handle 81. When you disconnected the XP drive, your 7 drive became handle 80, but it does not have a boot sector.
