So, given the following information, is it possible to rescue my windows 7 install, or reinstall it? if so how?
Moving my machine to my new place, I set it up and turn it on to find the BIOS complaining it needs to recover itself.
One recovered BIOS later and I try to boot my install of windows 7, resulting in a black screen and a blinking caret/cursor. No boot logo, no "loading windows".
I then attempt to load a windows 7 recovery CD with identical result.
Booting the windows 7 setup dvd however gives me the "loading windows install files" screen, followed by this:
For reference, the only USB devices attached were a standard USB keyboard with no fancy features, and a Razor copperhead mouse. Removing the mouse made no difference. Removing my second HD made no difference.
So I burnt Ubuntu. Ubuntu worked. Tests show no issues with any hardware, my primary drive, the SSD windows 7 is installed to, was functional, read write tests passed, performance tests showing 260MBps+ read write speeds. No bad sectors, SMART reporting all fine. No RAM issues.
I then burnt a Windows XP Live CD, which loaded and ran with no issues:
Just to be sure, I went to the ASUS website and downloaded an update for my BIOS, entered setup, flashed, verified the BIOS setup/EFI UI was working, and proceeded to boot windows 7. Same result. I have tried setting up the SATA interface as IDE/AHCI/RAID with no change, disabling various chipset features, disabling VIA IDE controllers, forcing my CPU to 1 core, loading optimised defaults, etc.
So, given the above, is it possible to rescue my windows 7 install, or reinstall it? if so how?
Immediate Tools available:
- A macbook running bootcamp with OS X 10.6 and Windows 7
- An Ubuntu 10 live CD
- A Windows XP live CD
Hardware:
- ASUS P8H67-M-PRO
- Core i5 2300 Sandybridge
- OCZ Vertex2 60GB SSD
- Inno3d GTX 550 Ti 1GB
- 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz (2x 2GB)
chkdsk
is very clearly reporting an error, there.