This afternoon I have added a second GPU, swapped a HDD for a bigger one added a couple of cold cathode lights. reconnected everything and I get the message "Reboot and Select proper Boot Device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key." WTF. So far I have disconnected the two HDD's that are not my boot HDD which is a Crucial M4 SSD. It is seen in the BIOS it is my first boot device yet it is bot booting. Any advice before I reinstall?
Did you have the old HDD plugged in when you installed this current install of Windows? If that's the case, I'm willing to bet that it will boot if you plug it back in.
I have no idea but I will Switch HHD's to see if you are correct but that hardly solves the problem. As the HHD's I switched only had my Steam installation on and I cloned it to another bigger drive.
I take it you're running Windows 7. Is that right? Basically, Windows has a really ****ty habit of installing the MBR on to another drive other than your SSD if you leave them plugged in during the install. It makes absolutely zero sense to me and the only real way to stop it from doing it is to disconnect every drive apart from the SSD during installation. My Dad's machine is the same. If I remove his data drive, a HDD, the system will not boot, and it is the same in some other systems that I've done before too. The MBR, for whatever ridiculous reason, installs on the HDD.
You could always try a repair install rather than a full clean install (leaving all other drives disconnected). Apparently this may fix the MBR issue. Edit: a bit of Googling suggests that you may need to run the repair several times - this link has more details http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html?ltr=S
I started the reinstall but the reread the posts here and have stopped it whilst I disconnect the secondary drives. Doh.
I was getting a similar problem with mine when I was building my PC, putting partitions on my DATA drives. I disconnected everything and installed with SSD only connected...
Next time you do a Windows install, do it with only one drive (your intended C drive) installed to prevent this in the future.
I've had this issue more times than I can recall, I never seem to remember to remove all other drives when installing. Windows always seems to store the MBR on another drive when there is more than one drive present. I've fixed it every single time by just inserting the windows install disk and repairing the installation. Worth noting for next time as it'll most likely save you from a full re-install.
