Installing Windows 7 On A Secondary HDD And Changing It To Boot Hdd
Nov 18, 2011
Im currently using a 32 bit OS and thinking of changing to a 64 bit OS. I currently have 2 1TB HDD. Will it be ok if i install a fresh 64 bit os in my secondary HDD and change it to my boot drive?
Instead of installing programs on the main OS Drive and installing on a secondary drive or partition, I should still be able to run the programs if I decide to format the OS drive and reinstall Windows. If so, the problem I'm seeing is that Windows won't know those programs are installed (like using the search bar to find programs or the program list) since whatever registry entries the program installer made will be wiped. Is there an easy way to back it up?Or is it advisable to just reinstall everything when I reformat?
I have a bit of a strange question about installing the Windows 7 upgrade. I'll try to keep it as simple as I can. Firstly
1: I currently have Windows XP SP3 Home Edition installed (and activated) on my 160GB WD Caviar Blue hard drive, which has 8MB cache. It's getting a bit full now.
2. This hard drive is one of the few remnants of a Dell machine I bought a few years ago.
Surprisingly, the restore disk still works and activates, even though I've changed the motherboard and a number of other things over the years. My last reinstall was about a year ago, and I had no problems reactivating whatsoever - I didn't even need to phone Microsoft.
However I doubt it'll install and activate on a new hard drive - particularly as I've also changed the DVD drive since my last activation (as the old one broke), literally the only things remaining from the old system would be the RAM and the processor.
2: I have purchased a 500GB WD Caviar Blue with 16MB Cache
3: I intend to buy Windows 7 Pro Upgrade from TheUltimateSteal for £30. I'm a student, but will be graduating soon, so it seems sensible to take advantage of this offer while I can.
4. Clearly I can install Windows 7 in the normal way onto my current drive and use the 500GB drive for backing up my files, which I'll do if that's the only option.
5. However, if I did that I would not be taking full advantage of the extra cache of the new drive. It would be nice if I could use that for my primary installation to speed things up a bit.
So here's my question:
If I start the upgrade process having booted from the 160GB drive, but during installation select my 500GB drive as the target for the installation, will Windows 7 install and activate correctly? Will it recognise the pre-existing installation, even though it was on a different drive?
If not, then:
If I install my Dell restore disk on the new drive, and don't activate Windows (which presumably I won't be able to), and then run the Windows 7 upgrade on THAT drive, will Windows 7 install and activate correctly?
Basically, is there a legitimate way of installing a Windows 7 Upgrade onto the 500GB drive, on the basis of there currently being a valid XP installation on the 160GB drive?
I have no intention of continuing to use XP after the upgrade, if I am able to install and activate Windows 7 to the new drive, then this will serve only as a backup for my files.
Has anybody tried something similar and succeeded/failed?
I've already read the tutorials on here about doing a clean install of Windows 7. I'd like to avoid dodgy workarounds, as I'd rather not run into problems further down the line when it comes to updates and that sort of thing.
I installed windows 7 on my computer that has two hard drives and I tried to remove the secondary drive ( it was used as storage) when I removed the second drive I was then unable to restart my computer. I tried to repair start up from the install disk (3 times) it did not work. when I plug the second drive I am able to start up again. I would like to remove the storage drive and replace with a larger. I bought a wireless seagate 2tb free agent goflex hard drive and wanted to put the 2 tb hard drive into the computer and take my 1 tb drive from the computer and use it in the wireless system.
Using Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. W/ASUS P7P55D Deluxe board. Very stable and non buggy. Computer was running great with multiple drives. I substituted one of my 1TB drives with a brand new Seagate 3 TB drive. With the new drive hooked up, the computer will not boot and gives a message that there is no hard drive detected, put media in and hit the key. (something to that effect).
If I enter the bios in the condition, it shows all the drives in their correct order and the boot sequence is the first hard drive, CD, etc. It has detected the new drive as drive #3. But it will not boot. But, if I disconnect the new drive (power and SATA connector), the compute will boot up fine. I have checked all the connectors ad they seem fine. Is there something about the sequence in which the SATA connectors have to be connected?
I am working with Windows 7 Professional 32-bit, in a network environment and I am trying to test it with our old GPOs we use on XP machines.I am currently trying to install GPSI's such as Office etc.When I reboot the machine after a GPUpdate I can only see 'Please Wait' while it installs the updates, but I know some of these updates will hang. I won't know what's hanging if I can't see what stage of the update it is at.Is there anyway of customising this area of the startup to display which updates are installing?Like in Windows XP where the box would appear in the middle of the screen saying "Installing Managed Software <Program Name>" etc.
I am choosing which OS to boot by changing the boot order in my BIOS. To me, this seems clean and simple. I built 32 bit XP on one disk, then removed that disk from my system, installed a different disk, and built 64 bit Windows 7.
When both disks are installed, I change the boot order to select the OS I want, and each OS sees and can use the files on either disk.
Am I asking for trouble here, or is this as clean as I think it is? What I want is one set of user document files which can be used from whichever OS has been booted.
I have a newish Asus laptop. my old Toshiba laptop had a hard drive crash. I am hoping to recover docs and photos by use of a Linux system on a USB drive. I tried to alter the boot order on my new Asus to experiment with it, but I cannot seem to find a way to enable booting from a USB drive. on my working Asus, I have Windows 7 home premium, 64-bit version. the
I have an Asus X64 desktop machine. Last year I formatted the [1 terabyte] hard drive for a clean install of X64 Windows 7 Ultimate. I tried numerous times to install the X64 Windows 7 Ultimate, but it was a no-go. I ended up installing the X86 Windows 7 Ultimate on my X64 machine instead. Since then I have corrected the problem(s) preventing me from installing the X64 Windows 7 Ultimate. So, long story short. I am duel booting two versions of Windows 7 Ultimate utilizing two partitions. I prefer the X64 as I have 8 GB's of RAM and the X86 only recognizes 4 GB's.
In addition to that I have a third partition with Windows Developer Preview. I can also boot into Ubuntu 12.4 although I did not specifically create a separate partition for that OS.
So, I'm quad-booting. I've decided to eliminate all partitions, go back to a single hard disk, and begin utilizing VMWare Workstation 8 for any and all other OS's. But my problem is I don't quite understand the MBR fully. I wish to keep my X64 Windows 7 Ultimate but it was the second OS installed behind the X86 Windows 7 Ultimate.
I guess what I am asking, "Is there a way to get the MBR to reflect the X64 Windows 7 Ultimate so that I can format and delete the partition of the first installed OS?"
i have three partitions. P1) 1 logical with windows 7 RC, P2) 1 primary and system, (not clean install) with windows 7 7600, and P3) 1 primary with windows 7 7600, (formatted partition before installed). my problem happend when i tried to set the active partition from "P2" to "P3" using EASEUS. I used "P1" while doing this. after restarting, my machine won't boot. It shows the manufacturer logo, and then followed by a black screen with a flashing cursor on the upper left corner, doing nothing. i let this stand for ten mins but, still, nothing happens. is this normal? i also noticed the manufacturer logo showing a little longer than usual. after 10mins, i decided to restart my machine but the same thing happens. i managed to make a repair disc before this happen. so, i boot in to the repair disc. i tried startup repair but nothing changed. i tried setting the active partition again using CMD. i also tried system restore to "P1" which i used to open EASEUS. and it also failed.
I find that the Windows 7 boot screen slows down the boot process on my machine. Is there a way to restore the old Vista scrolling loading bar? I know it's there as my netbook uses it.
Using Windows 7, every time I boot up the icon size and font is different size either , large or small. I want large, but how do I change to lar.ge and keep it that way (make it default). Windows 7 now gives me what It wants. No pattern
I need to move the sata connection for my drive "D" on the motherboard, however after moving it Windows 7 won't boot.
Gateway LX6820, 8GB Ram Windows 7 HOMEPREMIUM 64 bit Drive "C"- Intel X25V SATA SSD 40GB, has 200MB System Partiton for MBR and the rest is for the OS Drive "D"- WD Raptor SATA 150GB, has User folders, Program Data, and Programs installed
I have a fresh install of Windows 7 HOMEPREMIUM 64 bit that was done with drive "D" in one of the hotswap bays. All my tweaks, and settings changes are done and Windows operates with no problems. Now I wan't to move the drive to an internal bay. The set up and install was done using sata 4 on the motherboard but due to cable routing I need to use sata 2 for the move.
After the physical move and cable change Windows sees the Raptor as drive "E" not "D", it can't access the user profile and loads a default profile instead. This default profile won't allow access to disk management so I can change the drive letter. I have tried using Diskpart to reassign the drive letters but when I boot into Windows it changes it back to "E" again (must be due to the sata port 2 being assign "E" in an earlier configuration?). I tried using Windows repair but it changes the boot sector to"C", the "C" drive to "D" and the Raptor to "E", had to change the cables to the original locations and do a system restore to fix that one.
I need to move the sata connection for my drive "D" on the motherboard, however after moving it Windows 7 won't boot.
Gateway LX6820, 8GB Ram Windows 7 HOMEPREMIUM 64 bit Drive "C"- Intel X25V SATA SSD 40GB, has 200MB System Partiton for MBR and the rest is for the OS Drive "D"- WD Raptor SATA 150GB, has User folders, Program Data, and Programs installed
I have a fresh install of Windows 7 HOMEPREMIUM 64 bit that was done with drive "D" in one of the hotswap bays. All my tweaks, and settings changes are done and Windows operates with no problems. Now I wan't to move the drive to an internal bay. The set up and install was done using sata 4 on the motherboard but due to cable routing I need to use sata 2 for the move. After the physical move and cable change Windows sees the Raptor as drive "E" not "D", it can't access the user profile and loads a default profile instead. This default profile won't allow access to disk management so I can change the drive letter. I have tried using Diskpart to reassign the drive letters but when I boot into Windows it changes it back to "E" again (must be due to the sata port 2 being assign "E" in an earlier configuration?). I tried using Windows repair but it changes the boot sector to"C", the "C" drive to "D" and the Raptor to "E", had to change the cables to the original locations and do a system restore to fix that one.
Current setup: C: Boot, Corsair SSD D: Files, samsung HDD
D:/boot files/user/(all user account directories moved here, when possible) I'm wondering if it's possible to install games such as Assasins' Creed or Skrym, but install all game data to this folder?D:/boot files/programs/* Many installers allow you to define a custom installation path, But I am unsure if these games would ask for one or force me to install to the default directory?
I installed opensuse 12.1 on dual boot along with my other windows 7 installation. Installation of opensuse is successful and i can use it. But when I tried to use windows 7 on grub, it says bootmgr is missing. I've already encountered this problem a long time ago so i tried to use bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /rebuildbcd and bootrec /fixboot in the recovery console in the windows 7 DVD. Rebuildbcd and fixboot did not work and it said something like it cannot find my windows installation. I also tried bootrec /scanos, it returned a windows installation on D:\Windows but my windows is in drive C. I think this has something to do with me messing up the active partition in disk management a month ago but i already fixed it by setting the active partition to the system reserved partition. Only fixmbr is successful, but now i can't boot on any OS because it says: Missing operating system.I also tried bcdboot C:\Windows but it failed with a message that goes like: Failure when attempting to copy boot information..
I can't get Win 7 to boot after setting up dual boot (Ubuntu 10.10) on my GF's laptop. I'll describe the problem and everything that has been tried so far. REALLY hoping somebody has an idea, I'm getting desperate.I installed Ubuntu last night via the Live CD. Used the Live version to install alongside Windows and partition the drive, install Grub, etc. At reboot, after POST it would just go to a black screen with a flashing cursor. I could only run off the live CD. A forum member determined the Grub was trying to load from the wrong partition. We changed that and voila! Grub now loads properly. I can boot into Ubunto via Grub with zero problems. HOWEVER: when I try to boot into Win 7 from Grub, it just locks at the same flashing cursor of death screen. The 7 partition is till intact, I can see and access all the files on the 7 partition from within Ubuntu, however 7 will not boot. I have tried downloading and burning the Win 7 repair disk and doing all of the following,Running the automatic Start Up Repair - several times. All it does is remove Grub, but booting still goes to the flashing cursor and I have to reinstall Grub again to be able to do anything after POST.I have used the command prompt to run "bootsect /nt60 SYS /mbr". Has the same effect as above.I have used all the bootsec.exe /fixmbr, /fixboot, and /rebuildBCD commands. Again, all have the same effect and I have to reinstall Grub to get anywhere.I don't have an installation disk to try and just do a repair install because Asus apparently doesn't feel that I would need one of these. All I have is the recovery disks from the Asus AIRecovery application that want to just re-format the entire drive and start over. This isn't an option. It's my GF's laptop (mine gave up the ghost last week) and we both have WAY too much highly important data on here. Not to mention she would castrate me . Now from all my research the only other thing I've come across that sounds possible is that the boot flag needs to be set to a different partition. Somebody had a somewhat similar problem and it turned out the way Dell set up the system the boot flag had to be moved to a recovery partition and it worked fine. I'm wondering if Asus has something similar going on, but I can't figure out how to move the boot flag. I'm going on 12 straight hours of working on this now
copied a hard drive using parted magic. I believe i need to edit a boot.ini file? Or was that something for XP? been a while since i upgraded a hard drive so i dont remember exactly what i did last time. Only thing i seem to remember clearly was to NOT plug both drives in once i copied things as windows would have problems with two hard drives, one being the clone of another. So as far as i can tell, everything has been copied. Just need to know what i need to do so windows will actually boot off of it. Not counting changing the boot settings in the bios, which i already did to no effect.
I have a Acer laptop which had a corrupt Windows installation, so I couldn't boot from the hard drive.The user doesn't have recovery discs and the Alt F10 Recovery option wasn't available, even though the hidden recovery partition is there PQSERVICE.In order to get to the files, a copy of Windows XP Pro was installed, but it won't activate - that that isn't a problem for me as I will remove it before the 30 days.I was given a recovery disc set designed for another computer, but - although it didn't work - the next time I booted the laptop it ran the eRecovery program and restored Windows 7 onto it, which is fantastic !!My problem is that the system is still booting to Windows XP which is on the D partition, and not to Windows 7 which is on the E partition. There is another partition called C called "SYSTEM" but it contains nothing apart from a hidden Program files folder !How do I tell the computer to boot from the recovered E partition so I can use Windows 7 and create the Recovery discs needed ? Then I can remove the Windows XP installation that I don't want or need.
my boot drive leter. recently bought a ssd installed my edition of win7pro 64 onto it no problems except i had my old hdd still plugged in which was my c drive letter ,thus i installed operating system onto my ssd with an e drive letter.ok so i have tried to run a couple of programmes which i use which have failed because the programme is looking for a specific file in c boot directory which i obviously havent got....hope you can understand what im getting at.so big question how do i change my ssd boot drive letter to :c and that all my existing programmes will still work.
A while ago I bought some new big 1TB HD's and decided to install windows 7 Ultimate onto one of them. To make the transition from XP to 7 easier for me I decided to do a multiboot so i could switch back to XP if i needed something.Once i had everything the way i wanted it and i was no longer using XP i decided to remove the old HD. Also it was an IDE and it was cluttering up the inside of my computer. Now whenever I unplug the original HD i get a boot disk failure.my guess is that my computer is looking to the C drive for where to boot windows 7 but I dont know how to change it so that it looks to that HD instead.
It came with 2 primary partitions: a 650 gb C drive (boot) and a 50 gb D drive (recover). Because the windows partition tool didn't let me reduce the partition size by more than 50%, I decided to use EaseUS partition master to do that. I made D drive logical and renamed it to F, made the C drive 200 gb and made a new 400 gb logical drive and named it D. Then I restarted the laptop and let the tool do its work. After this, the problem started. I couldn't get past the bios screen, and couldn't even tap F2 and F8 to get in the boot menu. When I inserted my windows 7 recovery dvd, I heard the dvd drive working, but nothing happened. When I plugged in a usb drive, however, the laptop loaded the cd drive and I could reinstall windows 7 from the cd. Windows works now, actually, even my old windows installation still works, but I still can't boot up without inserting the usb drive first.
I was originally running Windows XP 32bit. I tried to install Windows 7 32 by booting from the CD but I had a problem where I would get past the Loading Windows Files page then I ended up on a screen which appeared to be a Windows 7 Wallpaper and only my mouse cursor but nothing else would happen. I was since able to install the 32 bit Windows 7 by loading it up in Windows XP itself and going from there. However I now need to install the 64 bit version instead. And this cannot be done whilst in the windows environment. It has to be booted from the CD, But once again I am having the same problem. I get to a black screen which says Loading Windows Files with a grey loading bar. Then it goes to a starting windows page, and then finally the blueish coloured wallpaper shows up and my mouse cursor but nothing else happens. I don't have anything to click on.
I have a ide hard drive with windows 7 installed on it. And a sata harddrive with xp installed on it. I wanted to be able to dual boot with the two but when i try to boot xp i get this error.
I recently installed a new USB 3 Hub, however, Windows 7 refuses to boot when it is plugged in (via 4-pin molex from the PSU). When the unit is unplugged it boots just fine, but when it is plugged in it just hangs at the start-up screen indefinitely.
This all started whenever I wanted to change my text size different by changing my DPI settings. What I did was right click, go to screen resolution, and clicked on "Make text and other items larger or smaller". From this I changed it to 100% from 125%. I noticed it had changed my font size to the 100%. It then made everything SUPER small when I changed my theme settings.Whenever I right click and go into personalization settings, I do the usual customizing to my likings. Since I want to save the theme, I do so by naming it, blah. Now I want to use the blah theme by click on it, and I do so. Everything is fine and dandy until I right click my desktop to refresh(out of habit). This is the before and after of the font sizes.
Before After
My workaround was to set a custom DPI setting, log off like it prompts me to, then changing it back to 100%, again prompting to do so. It is so annoying to do so.
i wanted to install xp since there were some program glitches in win vista and 7. now when i boot, it doesnt give me the option to boot into Windows 7. it was gone.i created a separate 20gb partition on the same hd as my Windows 7 and installed it onto that.should i repair my Windows 7 os and delete the xp? now i removed the xp partition and now it has no os to boot into.
I just finished installing Ubuntu 10.10 and was wondering how I could boot Windows 7 instead of ubuntu. Ubuntu loads and does not give me a choice of wanting to run Windows 7.
I have installed Windows 7 and then I installed Linux on an other partition of the Hard Disk now I wanted to install windows XP for some project work, I removed the linux (ubuntu) and installed the XP on the same partition. The problem is that I am not able to see the option to boot Windows 7.