Background:
I built my custom PC with the following specs -
Core i7 920, EVGA X58 SLI Motherboard, 6 GB G. Skill 1600, GeForce GTX 285 SC, 1 TB Western Digital Black Edition, 2x1TB Western Digital Green Edition
I installed windows 64-bit 7.7077 - Long story short, it is very unstable. I reverted back to the beta 64-bit 7000 (I've never had a single BSOD).
Current Situation:
I had unplugged my 2 WD GE HDDs. My 1TB WD BE HDD has 2 partitions - 300GB for OS and remainder for files - I installed Win7 beta and life is good - everything works, MB detects everything. Perfect. I plugged in my 2x1TB WD GE drives and things change. I boot the PC - MB detects all my HDDs. Windows 7 comes up, life is good. Windows says it is installing devices (the HDDs). Everything works as is - I see all HDDs and move files etc. I did however change the drive letters of my 2 1TB WD GE HDDs. Reboot...
MB does not detect my 1TB WD BE - it pauses and brings up the other 2 1TB WD GEs. Windows doesn't even try to load, gives me black screen with some non-descriptive solution.
End Result:
I unplugged my 2 1TB WD GE HDDs, and left my 1 TB WD BE HDD in, and windows 7 boots right up - despite the fact the MB still does not detect the HDD on POST. When plugging in a paticular 1TB GE HDD, windows boots with it. plug in the 2nd one, windows cannot boot.
My Thoughts:
Somehow the Master Boot Record is not showing correct information to the MB. I tried the windows recovery counsole - bootrec /fixmbr - has no effect though it was successful. /fixboot - 'element not found' error comes up. The recovery console does not show the windows installation - but it does exist when I manually try to detect it using another utility in bootrec. Only difference is that it is showing under the E drive rather than C. when I boot up in windows, it shows C drive as the OS partition.
Ranish Partition Manager can't load off my ''Ultimate Boot CD'' - gives me tons of errors.
At the end of my rope:
I want to understand what happened to the MBR and how to fix it rather than wiping my HDDs with a low-level format. There has to be something to do or utility to run. I think my 2nd 1TB WD GE is confused in it's MBR and thus Windows read it and thought it should be the OS drive and updated the BE HDD accordingly. Problem is when the PC reboots, everything is messed up.
I will add that after my prior installation of Win7 7077 - I switched the drive order on the sata connectors and did install win7 on the SATA 3 rather than SATA 0 - it worked but then I decided to switch it back to SATA 0 - and then these problems occured.
Comments:
Apr 28, 2009
- Okay...
I am running now. Not sure I understand everything but I think I know what happened. I unplugged all of my HDDs and plugged my 1TB WD BE and plugged it into SATA 3 port. Booted up and the MB regonized it. Then I ran Windows recovery fixmbr/fixboot. Turned off my PC. Plugged in my 2x1TB HDDs and ran Ultimate Boot CD - Ranish Partition Manager. I noticed that one of my HDDs had been marked to "Boot" when the other one was not. These HDDs are not for booting period. So I turned it off. Turned off my PC then plugged in all of my HDDs - booted into Windows recovery and ran again (for sanity sake) fixmbr/fixboot and rebooted into Windows 7 - life is good.
Don't have a clear understanding but I think I have a faint idea why this happened in the first place. Partly due to crashing Windows 7.7077 during install when my WD BE was on SATA 3 instead of SATA 1 with (one of my WD GE) was plugged into. Which, the HDD was marked to boot on even though nothing was on it...once I removed this boot flag, put things back to normal...life is good.
Maybe someone else may find this problem but I would suppose it be a long shot!
