what do you mean by drive bootable?
if there's no system you cant boot.
So you must do a custom (new) installation of W7 on that
partition.
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Windows 7 - Make a non-bootable drive bootable
System Recovery Option - Install hard disk drivers
I had Windows Vista (Home Premium) running fine on my first hard drive. I added a second, empty drive and installed Windows 7 Ultimate onto the second drive with the dual boot option. Everything worked great. I could boot to Vista on drive 1 or boot to Windows 7 on drive 2. No problems. Then later drive 1 died. Totally dead. "Operating System not found." SpinRite from grc.com could not even detect the drive, let alone fix it. I removed the dead drive 1 and put the Windows 7 drive in the drive 1 bay (HP laptop). But the Windows 7 disk won't boot. That makes sense, because with dual boot, the boot information is on the first drive and that drive is dead, gone. The Win7 drive is not bootable.
-- I booted from the Windows 7 Ultimate DVD and chose Repair your computer, bringing up the System Recovery Options. I clicked Use recovery tools... and clicked Next. Then I chose Startup Repair, but that was unsuccessful several times.
-- So next I went to System Recovery Options, clicked Use recovery tools again.
No OS is listed in the pane. That makes sense, because the drive isn't bootable.
-- The screen says: "If your operating system isn't listed, click Load Drivers and then install drivers for your hard disk." Great! Except I don't know where to get the needed drivers!
Please help me find out where to get the drivers. Once I know that, I can put the file(s) on a USB drive and install them from the Load Drivers button. It is looking for a Setup Information file (.inf)
My drive is a Seagate Momentus 2.5 internal 500GB drive
ST905003N3A1AS-RK
I've been to the Seagate site and some drivers sites, but I don't know what to download to make the drive bootable. Help please.
-- IMPORTANT: This is not a Boot Order problem. PC is set to boot from DVD drive, then from hard drive, then from USB drive. But the hard drive is not bootable, so, of course, it does not boot from the hard drive. The message appears: "Operating System not found"
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Answers
scifikillr - Thank you for the fast response. Unfortunately, no joy. The steps you explain are for Windows Vista, not Windows 7, but they are not far off. For Windows 7:
1. Load up the Windows 7 CD (Boot to disk)
2. Go to the recovery console (Click "Repair your computer")
3. There is no Command Prompt option, so press Shift-F10 for a Command Prompt.
4. Type bootrec.exe
The options are: ( see: http://support.microsoft.c
bootrec /FixMbr
/FixBoot
/ScanOs
/RebuildBCD
5. Since my OS isn't listed, I tried bootrec /RebuildBCD after trying all the other options.
It identifies a Windows installation in C:\Windows
but then when I press Y to add it to boot list, I get this error message:
Element not found.
The error message is:
senad: Actually, I installed Windows 7 on the disk. But I elected to dual boot from the primary Vista disk. So the Windows 7 OS is on the second disk but not the files needed to boot from that disk. The Windows 7 DVD has a repair option with a button that says "Add Drivers" and instructions that seem to apply to this situation. I need to load those drivers, but I don't know what to load. Hopefully someone else knows how to use the Load Drivers button. The on-screen instructions say:
"If you operating system isn't listed, click Load Drivers and then install drivers for your hard disks."
Clicking the button brings up a prompt that says:
"Insert the installaction media for the device and click OK to select the driver."
I can navigate to the DVD, the C drive, a USB drive, but I don't know what driver to select. It wants an .inf file.
Your installation from the first step was incorrect. You did not hide the Vista partition on Disk1 while installing Windows 7 and let it copy its Boot folder with boot files to Vista partition. Now when Vista drive gone your Windows 7 doesn't have proper boot files to load. And this is not driver problem.
Now your choice is either to install Windows 7 onto third drive and copy necessary folder called Boot to the Drive2 then run repair from Windows 7 install DVD.
Or simply reinstall your Windows 7.
For future attempts to create multiboot system configuration please refer to this article: http://www.experts-exchang
I tried to explain the problem that could one get in case of traditional mulitboot steps are taken. And you got exactly what I was warning about.
noxcho,
Wonderful! You understand the problem. You gave me the start I needed. Here is how the problem was fixed:
1. Remove my unbootable Windows 7 drive and install a blank drive
2. Install Windows 7 onto the blank drive (minimum install). (Cannot copy the \Boot files here because BCD is in use)
3. Restart with Windows 7 DVD
4. Chose Repair
5. Insert USB thumb drive
5. Press Shift-F10 for DOS window
6. Copy contents of C:\Boot to USB drive E:\Boot. Removed USB drive.
7. Remove the hard drive and install my old unbootable Windows 7 drive
8. Restart with Windows 7 DVD
9. Insert USB drive
10. Press Shift-F10 for DOS window
11. MD C:\Boot
12. Copy contents of USB Drive Boot folder to C:\Boot
13. Remove USB Drive
14. Restart with Windows 7 DVD
15. Click Repair your computer
16. Click Use recovery tools...
17. Click Next
18. Click Startup Repair
19. Wait anxiously
20. Repair process finished. We are making progress.
21. Restart - "Operating System not found" Rats!
At this point I restarted from Windows 7 DVD and went back to a DOS prompt and tried the steps in my reply to scifikillr, above, and got an "Element not found" error message when running bootrec /rebuildmbr
A Google search turned up this page:
http://www.beginnerspc.com
I followed these steps to make the partition on C drive active:
1. Shift-F10 from System Recovery Options window after booting from Windows 7 DVD
2. C:
3. diskpart
4. select disk 0
5. select partition 1
6. active
7. exit
8. Restart with Windows 7 DVD
9. Repair computer
This time System Recovery found problems and prompted to Repair and Restart.
It gave these details:
Root cause found:
The partition table does not have a valid System Partition.
(Maybe this was *before* I made the partition active - I'm just not sure now.)
The second pass through System Recovery gave these details:
The following startup option will be repaired:
Name: Windows Boot Manager
(and some more details)
The third pass through System Recovery gave these details:
Root cause found:
--------------------------
Boot manager is missing or corrupt.
Repair action: File repair
Result: Completed successfully.
At last, I was able to boot from my original Windows 7 disk. It is bootable.
By the way, yesterday I first tried an online tech support site and went through three technicians who, though friendly, did not know how to fix this. I then called Microsoft Technical Support, happy to pay for their services, but they were uninformed about System Recovery for Windows 7 and would not escalate for the longest time and finally made an appointment 2 days in the future to get the next level of assistance. I really should have come here to Experts-Exchange.com first!
Many, many thanks to each of you experts!
After a couple of times through the System Recovery, the computer at last recognized the C drive, with my original Windows 7 OS, as bootable and booted. Hooray!
Well done. Thanks for the points. I have met this exact problem during my betatests of Windows 7 RC. As I was using Partition Manager as an assistant tool I was able to set the system drive active and update BCD automatically so it was a little bit easier for me that for you.
Anyhow I am happy you got it resolved.
Thanks again.
Take care
Nox
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by: scifikillrPosted on 2009-11-03 at 20:39:42ID: 25736443
Try this, if you can (instructions were intended for XP originally, but they should work):
1. Load up the Windows 7 CD (Boot to disk)
2. Go to the recovery console (Click "Repair your computer")
3. In the System Recovery Options, click "Command Prompt"
4. At the command line, type: bootrec.exe
This should walk you through repairing your master boot record (MBR) which should make the drive bootable.
If bootrec.exe doesn't work, you can try using "fixmbr" instead. That was how this was done in XP.