I am planning to replace my motherboard and memory on my Win 7 Home premium 64b. I've been updating MBs for 25 years and now I am getting conflicting answers regarding booting existing hard drive on new MB. My present Win 7 installation was installed on my present MB. Before I have always been able to use an existing hard drive and OS on a new MB.Now when I asked Gigabyte if a reinstall would be required they said no, but the registry may be full of unneeded drivers etc which would affect performance. This seems a solvable issue using registry cleaners and editors.But I am also getting opinions that Win 7 will not boot up on a new MB and reinstall OS would be required. Considering the number of programs, some on disks others from downloads. activation keys etc, this is a major problem.
External backup for 2 Windows 7 home computers.Prices are currently at a premium for a 2T 2 1/2" USB 3x external backup drive. I will retire the XP machine soon that is being replaced by the new Windows 7 machine. The XP machine has 2 drives--one of which is slower than molasses and you can hear the thing churning away when nothing should be going on (indexing off).I've never had much luck with diagnostic software--in particular PC Doctor when it was shipped with Lenovo systems.Is there, in particular, hard drive diagnostic software that really can diagnose a problematic drive?
I use an WD external hard drive (1TB) for additional storage and it was working fine with no issues. The small USB connector broke off the board yesterday and I purchased a new enclosure and installed it. Now my computer does not recognize it as a storage device. I have all the data still on the HD and really do not want to loose it. I tried adding a letter for the drive, but it does not show up to change the letter of the drive.
I have a hard drive with Windows 7 and lots of data on it (it's my current computer). I'm upgrading to a different motherboard and would like to know what I should do software/driver wise to prepare for the HDD transfer... Should I uninstall all the drivers so Windows 7 can detect all the new hardware from the new motherboard?
I was wondering if you could provide me with some feedback on a hard drive issue that started when I booted up my pc yesterday. Hard Drive is WD 160GB SATA.
I received this error at boot up:
Read Disk Error CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart
I restarted and luckily I was able to get to the desktop (took longer then normal tho).
Decided to double check all the connections... all plugged in nice and secure. Rebooted. Got the Read Disk Error again. this time it took me 3x to get to desktop. I decided to try another SATA connection on motherboard. REbooted.... got error again.
I ran a chkdsk/r and when system rebooted the Read Disk error showed up again.
After another 3 ctrl+alt+del reboots... I was able to get into Windows. I downloaded the Diagnostic Tools from WD and my drive failed both the Quick and Extended Tests. Not surprising lol
Anyhoo, here is a screenshot of my WD Diagnostic test results. I was wondering if it was a HDD issue or a motherboard issue? Any thoughts? I would rather replace a HDD then a motherboard. This WD 160 SATA drive is less then a month old also. BIOS sees the hard drive.also tried setting BIOS back to default.... sometimes that works but not this time.
My Windows 7 motherboard stopped working so I installed a new motherboard. The SATA hard drive is not recognized by the motherboard software or the Windows 7 installation disc. What the heck?
i have just installed a new motherboard/cpu/ram and i am just trying to start windows 7 from an existing hard drive, with it already installed. i have heard that if windows 7 was pre installed on your computer then it will not work. is this true?if needs be, i have a brand new copy of windows 7 that i can make a new start from. question 1. how do i make a new install of windows 7 if it wont boot in the first place. question 2. will i be able to keep my programs/files on this hard drive?
specs
mobo: biostar n68s3+ cpu: amd athlon ii x4 3.0ghz os. windows 7
I am doing a motherboard upgrade for a friend. I need to know how I can move his hard drive with his current OS instal to the new motherboard without having to do a fresh Windows 7 install. He has too much that cannot be replaced. Is there a way to do this?
My Windows 7 Pro x64 has twice had to be completely reinstalled after serious faults.Each time before the crash Virtual XP had been installed and had created its own VHD.Both VHDs have been preserved, but the Virtual machine(s) have apparently isappeared. On each Windows 7 reinstallation, the important folders from the previous version were saved in a Windows.Old folder. I now want to reinstall VirtualXP and choose one of the old VHDs rather than create yet another one. What is the easiest and fastest way to do that?
I have a system with three hard disks on them. The Primary one has the OS and some programs. Secondary one has programs and data (like pictures and such). Third one has data and backup data.I recently formatted the Primary drive which had Windows Vista on it, and did a full install of Windows 7 Pro.After the install, the Secondary and Tertiary disks showed up in disk management; I just had to assign drive letters to them.The issue: I can see the existing Secondary and Tertiary disks in windows explorer. I can go into properties on each hard disk and see that there is used disk space on them (so the data is still there). But Windows Explorer shows both hard disks as empty. I can't actually see any of the data. What can I do to fix this...obviously without formatting the disks and losing the existing data on there? Is this perhaps a driver issue?
I have a partition question and after scouring the Web, can't find anyone with the exact same situation as mine. Basically what I'm wondering is if I can delete a primary partition and then extend another, non primary into that space.
Here's what I have and why I want to do this: my laptop came from the factory with one 500GB SATA drive, split into two partitions (C, primary, and D, logical, each 250GB). The Win7 install was on the C drive. Recently, I installed a 120GB SSD as a second drive, and using the tools with it, copied the contents of my existing C partition to the new SSD, and then made the SSD the boot drive labeled as the C drive. So far so good, everything works fine.
Now, what I'm left with is this: C: 120GB (SSD, now the boot drive with the Win7 install) D: 250GB (SATA, the original D partition, Disk Management IDs it as a logical drive, extended partition) E: 250GB (SATA, the original C partition, Disk Management IDs it as a primary partition)
So, I have the original "C drive" on E now... it's no longer the system/boot drive. Obviously I don't need the files on it as they are all on the new SSD. What I want to do is to delete all those files and then combine what's on D and E into one 500GB D drive as I have no reason to have the two partitions. Is it possible to just delete the E partition and then extend the D partition into the unallocated space? I'm confused because it seems as though the D partition may rely on the E partition being there since the E drive IDs as primary. Or would the D partition become primary?
I know I could just back up the D partition to an external drive, delete both D and E partitions, and reformat as one new D and restore the files, but I don't want to create more work for myself if I don't have to. Obviously I don't want to mess up the files on the D drive though, which is why I'm asking.
I have a hard drive I want to backup to a 64gb flash drive and then restore it to another different hard drive than where it came from. I have windows 7 and office on my laptop and I want it on my desktop pc. There isn't close to 64gb of info on my laptop so it should be fine even though the hard drive says I have 160gb. It is all free space except for those programs.
Is it possible to take an exising backup of a single drive,and restore it to a newly created raid 0? As in, I have a 64gb SSD, it's backedup. I want to get another 64gb SSD,Will I have to re-install everything or can I just restore the backup and let windows find the proper drivers ?
My HP mini laptop has been distructed its program and the Swedish keyboard and word program turn up side down...I want to reboot or reformat so it will be in its normal program.
I'm trying to move my Windows 7 to a bigger and better hard drive.
My original idea was to create a system image and restore it to a different hard drive with windows repair (after all, this is what you would do after a hard disk failure). However, it only allowed me to restore the image to the original hard drive.
The new MB will not recognize the old hard drives. My previous MB (socket 775) failed so I installed a new LGA1155 MB and a new Intel processor. I also installed my two SATA drives. One HD has the Windows 7 OS plus all the programs. The other HD has all the user data. When I try to start the new rig, it tries to reinstall Windows.
I got a new motherboard yesterday, installed it, and installed windows. This morning, I decided it would be a good idea to flash the UEFI (BIOS) to the newest version. Now, when I try to boot, it just sits with a gray cursor at the top left of the screen. I went into the UEFI and went to boot order, but it only shows my 1TB hard drive and my dvd drive. But I had a 750GB hard drive with windows installed. I think this is the reason it won't boot, because it doesn't see the drive with the OS installed.
So, I have a i7 2600K system with a solid state disk as the boot drive, and an older (c2008) Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB drive as the data drive for programs (that I deem as not worthy of the quick load times). The hard drive has given me some errors over time, and I bought a hard disk to replace it (a Hitachi 1TB). The issue I'm having is that the fact that Windows 7 puts a small (100MB) partition on the F3, and for some reason, even though I'm running Acronis 2012, it doesn't seem to be able to clone the F3 over to the Hitachi. I've also tried Drive XML, and for my 2 hour wait, I only managed to acquire a boot error. Thankfully, I've not done anything rash to destroy the data on the F3, but given the fact that I've seen corrupted files in Steam from that drive, I'm not will to trust it long term with my data. I really need to get the data onto that Hitachi, though... Anyone have any advice for upgrading the HDD in a SSD/HDD system? I don't really feel like it should be so hard, especially if I've bought Acronis True Image, but maybe they haven't designed their product to handle this scenario quite yet?
I have a HP Touchsmart IQ500. Turning my computer PC on today, all I got was a blue HP invent screen with setup, boot menu, system recovery, and system diagnosis, and I could not get past it. I entered the BIOS and figured out that the hard drive was listed as "not installed." Pretty sure that is the main problem.I tried a system restore (with the Windows 7 install disc), but I guess the computer couldn't read the hard drive enough to enter safe mode (I tried restarting and F8ing several times). I put in an external hard drive, and the BIOS read it; however, windows does not allow you to partition an OS on a hard drive.
I have an internal hard disk not in use ,and I would like to make it as external disk !I looked on the net and I found I should have the " encelsure " butt I think I wont find it here in my city .So is there another way ? like usb -esata cable
Me and my brother built me a new computer from scratch (he did the building - i did the watching). I purchased an internal hard drive from Overclockers UK. It's a Samsung 1TB drive. I also have a 64 Solid-state drive in there as my primary hard drive that Windows was installed on and a couple of programs are installed on. My storage disk (the 1TB disk) is for all my music/films etc. Whenever I drag and drop a file into the Samsung hard-drive - it copies it rather than moves it instantly.When I had a laptop, I had 3 external hard drives and this is the way it copied files onto them.how I can get the internal drive to stop acting like an external drive?
I have a virus infected sata hard drive with windows 7 on it. It has the win 7 anti virus 2012 on it, and it's a cybercriminal virus. I have lots of files I want to transfer to the new sata drive. I already have windows 7 installed on the new drive. How do I get the files from the bad drive to the new one?
I have a USB Webcam 6.1.7601.17514 from Microsoft installed on a Fujitsu Laptop (Windows 7 ) and I want to copy and install it on another Fujitsu laptop (Windows 7).The other laptop the camera is not working and there is no webcam driver installed.
I am using an external USB combo drive, now I decided to take out the drives and have them permanently plugged inside my system through sata. None of the hard drives are seen in the bios or windows 7 x64 yet when I plug them into my usb combo external they show straight away. I know it cant be a setting as I already have a couple of sata drives internally that work fine. Why are these two drives that have been sat in a usb external not being seen at all when plugged internally on the motherboard?
make a dualboot comp by adding windows XP to a new partition. I created the new partition with 20gb. (From the 500 of my actual harddrive)But before I actually installed on that, I got distracted with a second harddrive that my dad got(for no reason). It had a full copy of Windows XP backed up on it from another computer, so I figured I would just use that for the dualboot. I plugged it in (wired the same way as my old harddrive, but different data slot), restarted, checked the harddrive in explorer - all the data was there / reading correctly / etc, and I used 'easyBCD' to add the new harddrive to the boot list.(Which, of course, crashes if I try to start it. I just wanted to see what it would do). For a reason I can't remember, I unplugged the second harddrive for a bit, started the computer on accident (I don't know if anything loaded before I shut it off), and then when I plugged it back in.Windows 7 would not launch. It goes to a DOS-like window, except it's just a flashing _ and it never does anything even after a few minutes. XP didn't work still.. so I decided to reinstall XP (as I couldn't tell which harddrive was which on the list, I unplugged the main harddrive while installing onto the new).. and when I did this.. it formatted and installed fully... then restarted.. then restarted.. and restarted.. and just kept restarting, never showing any thing past the manufacturer logo/BIOS load-button-message-thing. So, I then try to use my 3-disk Windows7Recovery disk(burned myself with a program apparently included by the manufacturer.) It installed fully, appearing to work.. but when I launched it, it said "Invalid Partition Table" and wouldn't boot past that. When I insert my driver installer disk, it gives me a basic DOS window thing. dir A: shows the files in the disk. dir B: for some reason shows the same. C: says "Error reading from drive C: DOS area: general failure". All other letter:'s just say "invalid drive". (I'm doing this with both harddrives in.) I attempted connecting the harddrives to an old computer, but it gave an error for both. (It detected the harddrives, but said it had an error reading from it. Windows Explorer asked me to format it... {i'm willing to format one of the drives if anybody thinks it will help, but the old harddrive has data I'd prefer not to lose.} ) Looking on google, I saw several problems that all have similar problems (less overdescripptive than I am though) but none of the fixes suggested worked for me. Also - as I have two different with different errors, I only need to make one of them work.)Also - my other available computer has a CD burner / floppy drive if either are required. I also have several USB's. The computer can boot from USB's and CD's (tested), and I could easily take the floppy thingy and connect it to the computer.also - this computer is probably still under warranty unless unscrewing the hard drive voids it. .. does that count as modification of the computer?
I have a USB external hard drive that I keep all my documents etc on (had it for years)I upgraded from Vista Home to & Home Premium then had to upgrade recently to Professional to run my Sage. Through all these upgrades my ext. drive ran fine. Occasionally the drvie letter would change if I had something else plugged into the USB, this was always easily corected in disk management by changing the drive path.The connection on the case packed up so I had to get the drive put into a new case, now when I plug it in the drive is assigned G instead of F, I tried to change the drive letter allocation in Disk Management but it won't let me as the program still thinks I have a second ext. hard drive which is labelled F. I suspect this has happened because when the usb connection broke the drive was disconnected suddenly instead of a proper eject.How do I get Disk Management to remove the inactive drive - i can't find any obvious way - eject, delete etc are all missing when I click on tools or tasks.
I installed Ubuntu on my computer a few months ago and created another partition for it on my 1TB hard drive. I didn't really care for Ubuntu so I decided to delete the partition it was on. That might have been a mistake. Well, now there's 87.68GB of free space on my hard disk that I can't use and I don't know how to add it back to my c: partition.
There was another post about this a couple years ago, but I don't understand the instructions and am not actually sure if it worked. Can someone explain how to do this, please? I'm not completely computer illiterate, but I'm not familiar with partitioning disks. It was just the one time with Ubuntu.