metalhead

Cheers Nev, I will give this a go tomorrow.

Hi all , this one is puzzling me somewhat.I am running windows 7 ultimate, I have 2 500gb drives. The main drive has the os on and the secondary drive has all my photo's vids music etc. the problem is I had partitioned the secondary drive so I could install a back-up copy of Windows 7 on this for emergencies and had Easy BCD boot into both drives as and when I chose to.So far so good..... I then had to remove the back-up due to various problems, so I re-formatted the partition and re-sized the drive back up to full size. Now when I boot up the PC tries to boot into the partition which has NO os on it?. I can only boot to my main drive if I disconnect the secondary drive. I cant get the PC to fire up the main os when both are installed.....I have tried to tweak the BIOS and Boot order to only recognise the main drive, but still it tries to boot into the secondary? ...any Ideas would be helpful ...cheers all Pete

I didnt touch any of the IDE's, which Drives need to be altered? Master or Slave or both...thanx Pete

Hi again. I'm begining to think that the new SATA drive is not compatable with my 2 IDE drives......Is this Possible? I have sucsessfully installed Windows 7 on the SATA but ......My computer dosn't show or recognise the old IDE drives when I run this. When I change the BIOS setup to boot from my previous set-up This wont show the SATA drive? All 3 drives are showing in the Bios but I cant seem to get then to recognise each other in Windows....Gonna sell the SATA soon and get a Bigger IDE Drive if I cant get to the bottom of this problem.....Cheers from a seriously P****d Off Pete

No , only on Black pre-boot screen

Hi all, long time no visit ... as things have been running smoothly.....Until now. My present set up has 2 IDE hard drives with windows 7 on each (just in case I get problems with one installation) I have just bought a 500GB SATA drive and installed this alongside the previous drives.so far so good...the Bios recognises this as a valid Drive but when I boot up and go to my computer this isn't showing up? Not sure where I am going wrong..tried to put Windows 7 on this (Just to see if this recognises the Drive) but It cant install as it needs formatting first....any Ideas would be more than appreciated....thanks in advance Pete

OK TIME TO CONCLUDE THIS ISSUE ( I hope).I bit the bullet and put a new partition on my storage drive, installed windows 7 on here just to see if this would boot up quicker. Hey Presto this seems to have overwritten whatever was causing the problem..my old 7 setup now boots up in under 45 seconds again !!!!!! I am not sure how this cured the problem but I dint really care now..lol I am now going to re-format the new partition and hope that this wont reverse the good work......thanks to Jelly Bean for her patience and help , bye for Now Pete

Hello again ..I had re-set the boot order and am still taking 3 mins to fire up??? still think its a hardware issue....I might try to install widows 7 onto my storage drive (If there is room ) just to see if this boots any faster.......maybe that will boot quicker? if so then it might be a Main hard drive problem.........I dont want to have to replace my main drive unless I really have to...cheers Pete

OK here goes.......ran checkdisk from the new instalation and this stopped the problem after it looped a few times... well chuffed...however my system now takes about 3 mins to boot up from pushing the start button to showing the desktop..(I,m not too bothered about this at the Mo as least I can get on and use the PC now).I have tried to fix this issue with repair from the Install disc but this came up blank (Again) I think it may be a hard drive problem as it hangs on boot for a couple of mins before the option to choose which OS to run so I dont think its a software issue..It even dose this on the new install which I put in to gain access to the PC ( This wasnt happening before the looping issue) So trying to disable as many un-neccessary items as possible aint working...any Ideas anyone, I,m all ears if you have ......thanks to all for the help...........Oh yeah I tried to do an Upgrade from the CD to see if this would fix any further issues but this wouldnt Re-boot after the first restart so I gave up on this idea in case it F**%ed everything else up!!!!...Cheers Pete

Cheeers I will let you know how I get on in the next day or so...thanks for your help:cool:

Hi tried sfc/scannow.....no joy , last good config just put me back to the non responsive desktop. I have installed 7 on a different partition just so I can use the PC agian but would like to repair or get the old knackered system running agin as I have loads of programs which took a long time setting up. Once the Checkdisk has finished running I will attempt to re-install over the old setup as an upgrade and hopefully this will NOT delete my old stuff but install around them and repair the setup....fingers crossed lol

Hi again ..Nothing installed within the last week ......tried repair from CD ...nothing found...Cant check for updates as I cant get past the desktop !!!!!!

Hi Jellybean thanks for your reply, I dont think I have a Virus, Avast scan came back negative. Updates are set to auto , so I think I am upto date. I am running a Checkdisk at the moment to see if it can fin any bad sectors.otherwise I am sitll in the brown stuff for now ...Cheers Pete

Hi all, this is my first post so please be gentle with me.....Yesterday when I switched on my PC it got as far as the desktop then windows explorer stopped working then restarted and stopped again this dose this continuously so I cant even open ANYTHING. tried this in safe mode with the same results. Managed to run System Restore from safe mode but this didnt work. I have tried "Msconflg" and Clean Boot and still have the same problem.....I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit ,I have been using PC,s for 10 years and usually fix my own probs one way or another but this has got me stumped....any help would be gratefully accepted.....thanks in advance Pete