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AnswerCan only boot to OS if the install DVD is in the drive???

  • Tuesday, April 28, 2009 5:18 PMjtzako Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
    I instaleld Windows 7 and have an odd issue.  It will only boot to the OS if the installation DVD is in the drive.
    If I remove the DVD it says "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter."

    I have tried booting to the DVD and repairing the OS but it does not find anything wrong.
    I removed partitions and reformatted and reinstalled but still does the same thing.

    This only happens on my PC that has 2 physical HDD. Disk0 is split into 2 partitions, Disk1 is 1 parition.
    I installed from the same installation disk on my laptop (1HDD w/2 partitions) and it does not have this issue.

    Any idea what is going on or how I can fix it?

Answers

  • Saturday, May 09, 2009 9:35 AMElephant Rider Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     Answer
    I found this thread cause I was having the exact same problem.  Now I have figured out why.  

    I have 2 SATA and 2 PATA drives installed in my computer.  Aside from 7, the only OS I have installed is XP.  That is on the first SATA drive.  When I installed 7, I installed it on a separate HDD, the other SATA drive.  Both PATA drives are only used for storage.  The PATA drives show up in my BIOS as drives 0 and 1.  The SATA drives start taking their numbers after 0 and 1.  Even if an OS is installed with no other drives connected, that SATA drive will move down from 0 to 3 as soon as I hook up the PATA drives.  I don't know if this is the way is always is, or if this is just how my particular mobo works.

    When I installed 7, it would not boot unless I had the disk in the drive, even when I set the drive that 7 is installed on to be the first boot drive in the BIOS.  I never really spent enough time to figure it out, cause I wasn't too worried about it at the time, being that was just the first beta.  I couldn't even set up a decent dual boot.  Now, with the release client I want to start using 7 much more, and always having to put the disk in the drive to boot was becoming unnaceptable to me.  

    So I kept trying to set up a dual boot wiht EasyBCD.  At first I could not get the XP entry to boot, and 7 would still only boot with the disk in the drive.  Now there's a couple things that got me thinking.  After installing 7, one of the PATA drives would not show up.  When I went in Disk Management and forced it to show up, it showed up as a System disk, which I thought was odd.  This happened to be the PATA drive that shows up as drive 0 in the BIOS.  Also, while I was trying to set up the dual boot, the entry for XP kept picking this drive instead if the Windows 7 drive.  So I copied the XP boot files to this drive, set the BIOS to boot from this drive, and just like that the dual boot is working and everything boots right withough a disk in the drive.

    What's happening is this.  If you already have more than one HDD in your system when you install 7, it automatically installs it's boot files to whichever drive happens to be drive 0, no matter which drive you install the OS on.  In some cases, this happens to be your other OS install.  In my case, it happened to be a PATA storage drive.  So now I can either set that PATA drive to be the boot drive or I can go back and reinstall 7 without any other hard drives connected.
  • Thursday, April 30, 2009 6:59 AMRobinson Zhang - MSFTModeratorUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     Answer
    Based on my known, some similar issues are caused by boot sequence. Could you please check it?

    Thanks.

All Replies

  • Tuesday, April 28, 2009 5:26 PMJabez GanMVP, AnswererUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
    Hi,

    I think it is trying to boot from the wrong disk.

    If you installed Win7 on Disk0, please try removing Disk 1 from your PC and see if this works? If it does, then it is trying to boot from Disk 1. In this case, ensure that Disk0 is the Master and Disk1 is the slave (set the jumper on the hard disks).


    Jabez Gan [MVP] - http://www.msblog.org Contributing Author for: (Sybex) MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643
  • Tuesday, April 28, 2009 10:09 PMjtzako Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     

    This worked fine when I had Vista.. No hardware changes and now it doesnt work properly with Windows 7...

    I will take a look at the jumpers and see if they need to be adjusted, but I dont see how things can work fine with a marginally different OS but not this one.

  • Tuesday, April 28, 2009 10:22 PMjtzako Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
    OK, neither drive has jumpers. Both are SATA. I unplugged Disk1 (not the OS drive) I get a boot error. If I unplug Disk0 but connect Disk1 I also get a boot error (but not the same one as before)

    I am currently reloading Win7 with only Disk0 connected to see if it will work.
  • Tuesday, April 28, 2009 10:58 PMjtzako Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
    I installed with only Disk0 and so far it seems to work fine. I reconnected Disk1 and the system does boot without needing the DVD now. 

    What could cause this? Why would the OS get so confused just because there was more than 1 HDD in the system?  I sure hope the release version does not have this issue.
  • Wednesday, April 29, 2009 3:49 AMJabez GanMVP, AnswererUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
    Hi,

    I would suggest that you post this issue in Have Comments About Windows 7 Beta, so the developers will be aware of this issue.

    I do not have an answer on why you need to remove the Disk1 just to get Disk0 to boot properly. But it sounds more like a Win7 issue.
    Jabez Gan [MVP] - http://www.msblog.org Contributing Author for: (Sybex) MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643
  • Thursday, April 30, 2009 6:59 AMRobinson Zhang - MSFTModeratorUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     Answer
    Based on my known, some similar issues are caused by boot sequence. Could you please check it?

    Thanks.
  • Friday, May 08, 2009 10:46 AMRobinson Zhang - MSFTModeratorUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
    Hi Jtzako,

    Do you have any update on the issue?

    Thanks.
  • Saturday, May 09, 2009 9:35 AMElephant Rider Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     Answer
    I found this thread cause I was having the exact same problem.  Now I have figured out why.  

    I have 2 SATA and 2 PATA drives installed in my computer.  Aside from 7, the only OS I have installed is XP.  That is on the first SATA drive.  When I installed 7, I installed it on a separate HDD, the other SATA drive.  Both PATA drives are only used for storage.  The PATA drives show up in my BIOS as drives 0 and 1.  The SATA drives start taking their numbers after 0 and 1.  Even if an OS is installed with no other drives connected, that SATA drive will move down from 0 to 3 as soon as I hook up the PATA drives.  I don't know if this is the way is always is, or if this is just how my particular mobo works.

    When I installed 7, it would not boot unless I had the disk in the drive, even when I set the drive that 7 is installed on to be the first boot drive in the BIOS.  I never really spent enough time to figure it out, cause I wasn't too worried about it at the time, being that was just the first beta.  I couldn't even set up a decent dual boot.  Now, with the release client I want to start using 7 much more, and always having to put the disk in the drive to boot was becoming unnaceptable to me.  

    So I kept trying to set up a dual boot wiht EasyBCD.  At first I could not get the XP entry to boot, and 7 would still only boot with the disk in the drive.  Now there's a couple things that got me thinking.  After installing 7, one of the PATA drives would not show up.  When I went in Disk Management and forced it to show up, it showed up as a System disk, which I thought was odd.  This happened to be the PATA drive that shows up as drive 0 in the BIOS.  Also, while I was trying to set up the dual boot, the entry for XP kept picking this drive instead if the Windows 7 drive.  So I copied the XP boot files to this drive, set the BIOS to boot from this drive, and just like that the dual boot is working and everything boots right withough a disk in the drive.

    What's happening is this.  If you already have more than one HDD in your system when you install 7, it automatically installs it's boot files to whichever drive happens to be drive 0, no matter which drive you install the OS on.  In some cases, this happens to be your other OS install.  In my case, it happened to be a PATA storage drive.  So now I can either set that PATA drive to be the boot drive or I can go back and reinstall 7 without any other hard drives connected.
  • Friday, June 05, 2009 5:21 AMjester41 Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
    I have just disconnected all my other drives and now I have drive 0 on my main drive will see if this solves issue but like you when I went into disk management there it was my storage drive 0 was listed as a system disk this seems like a dumb issue but I guess an easy fix if this works.

  • Friday, July 24, 2009 12:19 PMBurnination Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     Proposed Answer
    I instaleld Windows 7 and have an odd issue.  It will only boot to the OS if the installation DVD is in the drive.
    If I remove the DVD it says "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter."

    I have tried booting to the DVD and repairing the OS but it does not find anything wrong.
    I removed partitions and reformatted and reinstalled but still does the same thing.
    Windows 7 installed boot files to a PATA drive (obviously seen as drive 0) and the rest of the install to the SATA drive I selected for the windows 7 install.

    *Solution;
    1) Turn off pc.
    2) Disconnect PATA or disk 0 drive and make sure the target windows 7 drive is on chanel 0 or 1, whichever is lowest depending on your mainboard.
    3) Boot off windows 7 dvd.
    4) Follow prompts to repair, you may need to repeat this if necesary.(I had to do it only twice, either windows repair found another problem first or windows sees it as a two stage problem.)
    5) Your Windows install should now be repaired with the boot files on your install hard drive rather than the second hard drive the Windows installer saw as Disk 0.
    6) You should now be free to plug your other hard drive in and continue as normal.

    Hope it works for you, that's all I did to fix my problem.
    • Proposed As Answer byBurnination Friday, July 24, 2009 12:19 PM
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