Pc Won't Boot - IDE Drive Internal Cable Issue
Nov 17, 2009
This is actually a solution to a IDE specific boot issue (which may even apply to Vista).
I have been trying to test Windows 7 professional on a spare work PC. The standard build for us is Intel Duo 2180 CPU, 2Gb RAM, single 200+Gb HDD, DVD-ROM/RW, on board sound/graphics - nothing fancy or esoteric.
Our machines have been upgraded over the years (new motherboards, PSU's, etc), many still in the cases they had 5+ years ago (Our Vista 'test' machine was newly built when Vista was released). This test PC had a single 320Gb Seagate IDE HDD. Despite running with XP-SP3 for the last two years or so without issue, Windows 7 Pro would install OK, but not boot from the drive unless the DVD was in and the system looked there first (I was aware of the 'system drive' issue often talked about). After 11 installs trying various 'tweaks' and even BIOS flashing - motherboard is only 6 months old - nothing seemed to work.
Suspecting a (previously unseen) hard drive fault, I opened the case to check serial numbers for warranty and noticed an 'original' IDE cable (not a current ultraATA cable). I don't know why, but I decided to change the cable and try the install one more time, and IT WORKED! Boots every time.
It seems that Windows 7 can see/use IDE drives connected using the older IDE cables, but it will not boot from them (to test, I tried putting back a different, older IDE cable - it didn't boot, but swapped the ultraATA cable in and it was fine again).
I just hope this may help anyone with upgraded older machines having 'inexplicable' boot problems with Windows 7
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Nov 28, 2011
Yesterday, I was browsing on my computer and heard a weird clicking noise when the CD drive was running. About a few minutes after that, Firefox froze so I did a hard reboot, and up comes this message:
"No boot sector on internal hard drive No bootable devices--strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility Press F5 to run onboard diagnostics."
I have no idea what it means, and I've been everywhere trying to do System Restore using the Windows 7 reinstallation disk, but unfortunately I couldn't create a restore point because my jump drive doesn't have enough space and Startup Repair couldn't solve my problem. I've even tried the bootrec.exe on Command Prompt but I had no idea what to do. This is the first time that this has happened to me. My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1545 and I have Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
I'm on a tight limb about this problem right now because my warranty expired in early June this year, and I don't have the money for them to look at it, let alone buy a brand-new hard drive.
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Oct 7, 2011
I have a Dell Inspiron that is running Win7 Home premium 64 bit and I am getting an error message while booting up it states "No boot sector on internal hard drive. No bootable devices--strike F1 to retry boot". When I strike F1 it boots just fine.
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Jun 3, 2011
It's a dell latitude, 1 year old. Laptop suddenly crashed and when the laptop booted it said: "no boot sector on internal hard drive". I tried repairing the boot sector with the windows repair function, but the hard drive is just empty... nothing to repair. Then I tried to boot off a ubuntu live cd. which worked. and showed me an empty hard drive with the_maximum_capacity_of_the_drive_GB of unallocated space.
Since that I reinstalled windows 7 two times, and stopped working after an hour or so. I installed ubuntu, which worked for several days. then i tried windows 7 again (clean install). And then I kept working on the laptop for a couple of hours until the "crash" happened. All the programs stopped working suddenly. When I opened anything I was shown this error: "Illegal operation attempted on a registry key that has been marked for deletion."
After that everything is lost if I turn the computer off. And I'm back at an empty unformatted hard drive. I changed the sata operation mode in the bios to different options before every installation of windows. I didn't try xp, because I don't have dell-xp cd's . Is the hard drive broken? I guess not because ubuntu works. and windows 7 also, but it just goes away suddenly... Here's a video (shot in portraitmode) of the event... [URL].
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Mar 4, 2012
I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop. I recently developed hard drive trouble and have had to order a replacement.Instead of installing Windows 7 all over again, with all the drivers, etc., I want to clone my existing hard drive to the new one.I intend to connect one of the hard drives to my system via a USB SATA cable with the other drive connected inside my system.
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Oct 8, 2012
Before I even go further: yes, the "hide empty drives" has been unchecked)I had to reinstall my machine and I was able to to see the drive letters for the internal flash card reader. However I think something might have gone wrong when I give my external HDD a drive letter that was held by one of the flash card reader).I wrote "I think" because I am not really sure since I never wanted to use the internal card reader till today so I never noticed there was an issue. Anyway, the internal card reader does not show up even when I insert a card in the reader. Basically nothing happens. I have uninstalled the "USB Mass storage device" and it gets installed without any issue but the problem is still there: I can't see the reader. the INTERNAL flash card reader has a USB slot and when I insert a EXTERNAL flash drive, the EXTERNAL flash drive shows up.
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Feb 19, 2012
Why do files moved to an external drive not behave the same as those same files in an internal drive? I noticed that if I do anything to a file that is in an external drive, that file can not be saved under the same name (read only). In order to do so one must save it internally and then copy or move it to the external drive.So I did just that--I copied a file from taken from an external drive, saved it in the internal one and then copied it back to the external one. Now if I r-click the propeerties of these 2 same files and then go to the 'Security' tab a difference is immediately apparent: The internal one has -1- System & -2 My-computername (user-PCuser and -3- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators) with all 3 accounts allowing all (full control, read, write, etc..). While the external drive has in Properties; -1- System -2- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators) and -3- Users (user-PCUserrs) with this final 3d one (and different one) with no Allow for "full control, or modify or write. So how does one have all its files in this external drive behave and be equal to all the same files in the internal drive?Since -3- Users (user-PCUserrs) in the external drive is that which is differnt from the internal drive I was wondering if it is OK to delete this Permission or 'attribute' or whatever it is called and create instead one equal to the one in the internal drive -3- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators)? ANd of course doing so in one go and not file after file after file individually?
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Feb 19, 2012
Why do files moved to an external drive not behave the same as those same files in an internal drive? I noticed that if I do anything to a file that is in an external drive, that file can not be saved under the same name (read only). In order to do so one must save it internally and then copy or move it to the external drive. So I did just that--I copied a file from taken from an external drive, saved it in the internal one and then copied it back to the external one. Now if I r-click the propeerties of these 2 same files and then go to the 'Security' tab a difference is immediately apparent: The internal one has -1- System & -2 My-computername (user-PCuser and -3- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators) with all 3 accounts allowing all (full control, read, write, etc..). While the external drive has in Properties; -1- System -2- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators) and -3- Users (user-PCUserrs) with this final 3d one (and different one) with no Allow for "full control, or modify or write. So how does one have all its files in this external drive behave and be equal to all the same files in the internal drive? Since -3- Users (user-PCUserrs) in the external drive is that which is differnt from the internal drive I was wondering if it is OK to delete this Permission or 'attribute' or whatever it is called and create instead one equal to the one in the internal drive -3- Administrators (user-PCAdministrators)? ANd of course doing so in one go and not file after file after file, individually, would be ideal.
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Jun 9, 2012
I don't have Windows 7 yet, but I'm just about to install it, but I figure it may be safe to do a back up first. I'm about to do an upgrade from Vista 64-bit to Windows 7 64-bit. I did find these recommendations:"An image backup of your hard drive offers an easy, dependable way to do just that, since it restores everything on the hard drive: Windows, applications, data, and even the Master Boot Record. To create one, you'll need an external hard drive, and an image backup program.
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Sep 23, 2009
i have this problem whereby whenever i resume the computer from sleep, the dvd drive disappear from "my computer" and device manager. It could not be detected as well. All the hard disks were detected.
The only way was to restart the computer.
The dvd drive is connected via the IDE cable to the mobo , using the Jmicron IDE/Raid chipset.
may i know if there is any remedy to this ?
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Jun 1, 2011
After numerous attempts, Windows install keeps stalling at the "expanding Window's files" screen, then cancels the install. (Bios checks ok, disk has no scratches, and both DVD writers return the same results.)To help prove the integrity of the SSD (still under warranty) I would like to now try doing a temp OS install on another internal HDD. There are 2 of those, each with data on them. Each HDD has only one large partition, as in drive D & drive R.What is the detailed procedure in preparing one of those HDDs in order to accept a temporary OS install, while still preserving the existing data on that physical disk? I must also be able to identify which disk is which (new partition?) when it comes to finding the "new" disk when loading the Windows 7 install software?
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Jan 12, 2012
I can't get any CD's to play in the internal drive so I can't install programs or play mucsic etc. on my Acer laptop (purchased in May/2011
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Feb 24, 2012
I installed a second hard drive on my Windows 7 Dell desktop. The drive is a Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive. It's only showing up as 746.39 GB Unallocated.
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Aug 31, 2012
for some reason my internal hard drive after installing it and reinstalling windows 7 it does not show up for some reason... I have check the cords to make sure they are in correctly
My Boot menu says it's there but my OS does not see it?
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Jun 1, 2012
I took out my internal optical drive from my Sony Vaio F13 laptop and put in SSD. Now I bought USB/SATA cabel and I connected the optical drive to the laptop, it is recognized in windows but it is treated as a hard drive (or removable disk). When I double click it in My Computer it says "Insert a disk into Removable disk. Is there a way to make my optical drive work via USB like this?
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Aug 12, 2010
I upgraded from Win XP to Windows 7 64 bit about a month ago (I did a clean install as I've always had issues with in place upgrades). My machine has four hard drives total, two internal SATA drives, and two external USB drives. For some reason my secondary internal drive, a WD 500 GB SATA drive (nothing fancy), keeps disappearing randomly while windows is running. This started about a week ago, it ran ok for the first 2 weeks or so.The drive comes back fine and dandy if I completely shut down the machine and then boot it back up. The drive stays until some random moment when Windows doesn't see it anymore. Now, if I do a simple Restart the drive doesn't show up, ONLY after I shut down completely, and push the power button back on, does this work. There is nothing in the System logs, no error messages, nothing, it just vanishes and is completely random.
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Jun 30, 2011
I have a Rosewill RX-DU100 Sata drive dock. Whenever I plug a HD into it on any of my Windows 7 Pc's, it shows up as an internal drive. That's great for me as I use Carbonite and they only backup internal drives. I was wondering why Windows 7 sees it as an internal and I could fool Windows into thinking other drives were internal as well?
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Feb 9, 2012
Since then I have installed a SSD for the operating system and porgrams so just use these drives for back-up and user data. I have another PC that i use for all my main work and photographs which I backup nightly onto one of the HD on my wife's PC 320HD. I have gigabit ethernet conenctions via my router. Also once a month I backup everything to a 500GB portable drive that i keep outside of the house. Problem is as my photo collection grows I am running out of space on the 320HD. So my question is if i want to get a bigger back-up HD should I:a) Buy a large external drive which I just leave permantently attached to my pcb) Replace the 320HD with a larger interanl HD. IF so can I put any old HD into the Vostro or are there so restrictions I need to look out for compatabiltiy
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Oct 27, 2009
Can I use a Windows Home premium upgrade version to install a clean 32 or 64 bit Win 7 on another internal hard drive?
I currently have Vista HPrem 32 bit on C drive and PC is 64 bit capable. As I use PC in home office I am not ready at this time to perform any upgrade/clean install on the C drive
I want to make sure I can dual boot if it can be done.
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Jul 27, 2012
I recently just built my own gaming computer with 2 internal harddrives. 1 128GB SSD and 1 500GB HDD. I keep all my main operating system files on the ssd for faster boot up and accessing files faster. I keep all my game programs and files on the HDD b/c of the space. some games will load straight from the HDD but others will try to install themselves again on the SSD. Is there some way to go into regedit or somewhere else that can change it to where it just loads straight from the HDD without any problems?
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Jan 30, 2012
I have had my Windows XP updated to Windows 7 by a computer tech. He promised 250 GB internal hard drive but I only received 80 GB. He installed an E Drive with 465 GB. Is 80 GB enough for Windows 7? Also, what can be manually stored in the E drive?
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Sep 7, 2012
I got a new SSD drive so in installed it into my computer and unplugged my other 2 internal drivers one with Windows and the other with Files on it, so i installed windows 8 fine so i shut down and disconnected the SSD just to be safe and unplugged my other two back in so i can copy all my data off my Win 7 to my Files drive. So i copied all my data (600gb) to my other internal drive into a folder called [backup] so when i was done i shut down and unplugged my Win 7 drive booted into my win 8 drive and was going to copy all my data back over but the folder [backup] isnt on my other drive! its gone, but it says the space is still used up on the drive it used to have 1.7ishTB free now its only showing 900ish GB free but i cannot see any of those files. Im freaking out because its everything i own and cannot loose these. How can i get access to my files? I tried searching on the drive for the files because i know some names but nothing came up, i even made it show hidden files and everything. I tried booting back to my win 7 drive to see if they show up there but they are still now showing up either. I know when i restarted it and booted it asked to do a check disk on all my drives but i skipped it to make sure it didnt mess anything up but i just retried it on that drive with my files and it started saying "deleting index xxxxxx.file" scrolling really fast so i restarted really quick.
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Oct 14, 2012
Have two internal hard drives.Thought would be good to partition them for organization.Have found that this slows Lightroom down.Can I unpartition without changing or losing any of the the files?
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Dec 3, 2012
I had a Windows XP OS that I used when I stored 15 gigs of data and photos on my iomega LDDHD-UP external hardrive. My internal hard drive crashed and I up graded to windows 7. The exxternal dive indicates all files are PBD files and I can't find the program to open or retrieve them .
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Jun 6, 2011
is it possible to boot windows directly from external HDD, not internal disk? (i have WD 500G) (because my internal disk is damaged..)i decided to install win 7 in the external HDD.
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Oct 15, 2009
When I turn on/restart the computer, the desktop itself has two hard drives in it (250GB and 1TB, 1TB is not the one the OS is on)
When I put the computer to sleep, and then wake it up, the 1TB is not active, and to access it I have to completely restart the computer. I'm using a legitimate retail version of Windows 7 Ultimate, if that helps any?
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Nov 6, 2011
My relatively new Dell desktop power supply died so trying to retrieve my data (pictures and docs) off the internal hard drive. Hooked it up with an adapter I have used in the past which seems to work fine and I can see the drive when I look on windows explorer on my laptop. The only problem is the Windows 7 operating system is preventing me from access the data stating I don�t have security access or right to copy the data.
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Oct 3, 2011
I'm running Windows 7 Pro 64bit (SP1) on my Small Business Computer.Three Internal Hard Drives: CDrive is OS, DDrive is Data, EDrive is Data.I would like to password protect both of my data drives. I want to have to enter a password to access ANY info on these drives.
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Nov 25, 2011
I've recently uninstalled itunes. When i restarted my PC i noticed that my internal secondary drive was missing. Reboot and still nothing. Powerdown wait 30 sec and swjtch back on: still missing. I finally opened it up unplugged it and replugged it and it found it again.
I then rebooted again and again it was missing repeated steps above same result.
Dont know what to do ant its a hassle to open it up every time. Windows 7 ultimate. Sata Seagate barracuda 2tb
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May 5, 2012
I have a dead laptop, I believe it was the hard drive, anyway. I took the hard drive out, connected it to my Network computer, all looks well, I heard it spinning (Good sign?) and then I booted the computer, it didn't actually load windows 7, it spent like a good 10-15mins saying "Loading windows 7" so I turned it off, moved the SATA cable to a different slot, it booted.. then when trying to detect the drive, it doesn't exist. I will need to format it, as it does have windows 7 on that drive aswell.
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Sep 11, 2012
I've been running my current set up for roughly two years and it has been fine until recently. My secondary drive for programs, storage, etc. will just disappear. It does not happen on any set routine or anything, just randomly.If I restart I do not get the drive back, however, If I shut it down and plug the drive into a different port it recognizes it again. I've gone back to the same port numerous times so none of the ports are bad.
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