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I have just lost five (FIVE!) hours of my Saturday installing Windows 7, and apparently all for naught.

I just purchased a new 1tb Western Digital SATA drive (WD). I'm currently running Windows XP SP3 on a 400gb SATA Seagate Barracuda, and decided I should upgrade, so the idea was to install Win7 on the new drive, then start to move all of my programs and files across as needed.

I put in my Win7 OEM disk (with my Seagate temporarily disconnected) and ran the install. As expected, it took forever, however all appeared to be well. It rebooted a couple of times during installation (as indicated) and seemed to be fine. After the installation was successful, I briefly changed some preferences in Windows 7 (just themes and icon display), and then checked for updates: 128 updates, totalling 401.9mb. I hit 'Update' and left my system to it. This took around 2 hours, and I didn't touch my PC as this was running. Once it was all done, it prompted for a restart, which I duly did. At that point (and with only the WD and DVD drive connected) I got DISK BOOT FAILURE. Sadface.

I have done the following:

  • Checked the boot order in the BIOS
  • Ran the repair utility via the OEM disk (no operating system shows up for repair)
  • Ran the repair utility, gone to command prompt and tried:
    • bootrec /fixmbr
    • bootrec /fixboot
    • bootrec /rebuildbcd
    • bootsect /nt62 ALL
  • Changing the SATA cables & changing SATA ports

...but nothing. I can browse the WD drive when I'm in repair console or command prompt, BIOS recognizes it... it just. Won't. Boot. I'd really rather try to repair it if possible than spent another 5 hours reinstalling it, but I'm at a loss. I suspect it was an issue with the 128(!) Windows updates, but I've no idea where to even begin sorting through that mess.

I can still successfully boot to my original Seagate XP drive with no problems (* wipes brow *).

Any ideas, or am I looking at a complete reinstall? And if that's the case, is there anything I should watch out for to stop this happening again?

Update:

Refer to my answer below: although I stated I had my Seagate drive disconnected during the initial install, I can't be absolutely positive this was the case, as reinstalling after disconnecting it (and moving it to another room, just to be on the safe side) appears to have solved the issue.

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  • Did you do a chkdsk to ensure the disk/filesystem are OK? What do WD's diagnostics say about the drive? Jun 1, 2013 at 15:14
  • @techie007 I haven't run a chkdsk yet, and I didn't realise WD had their own diagnostic tools. I'm booting to XP now with the WD drive as a secondary for the first time, so I'm about to do both of those things.
    – indextwo
    Jun 1, 2013 at 15:24
  • 2 hours and 30 minutes later: nothing. I ran an extended test using the WD diagnostic tool, which took 2hrs 25 minutes, and it reported passed on the drive. I ran chkdsk, which took 5 minutes, and it reported problems withthe file system. I ran chkdsk g: /f and it reported the errors fixed. Rebooted. DISK BOOT FAILURE.
    – indextwo
    Jun 1, 2013 at 18:10
  • This question appears to be too localized.
    – gronostaj
    Jul 19, 2013 at 7:57

1 Answer 1

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After repeated and furious bouts of swearing, I ended up zeroing the drive and starting again; only this time I completely disconnected all drives apart from my new Western Digital and the DVD drive. I ran through the Win7 installation; installed two critial updates; rebooted (successfully); installed a further 139 recommended and important updates; rebooted (successfully); installed a further two recommended updates; rebooted (successfully).

At that point there were no further updates, so I powered down, reconnected my Seagate, and powered back up. Success!

It has been suggested that Windows gets confused about which drive to assign boot-up information to. After ensuring my other drive was never connected during the entire installation and updates procedure, I'm willing to bet this was the case, as thinking about it (and contrary to my original post) I couldn't be certain that my Seagate was diconnected during the initial install.

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