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Phantom Windows 7 installation boot order


sp193

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My desktop computer has a Gigabyte GA-H77M-D3H mainboard, and has a dual-disk setup (1x SSD and one mechanical HDD). The SSD was its "system disk" (contains Windows and a few selected programs), while the mechanical disk contained my personal data and other programs.

I took out the SSD because I originally wanted to use it to speed up my old laptop instead. As a result, I installed Windows 7 onto the HDD and took out the SSD.

 

However, just a week ago when I was about to transplant the SSD into the laptop, it suffered a keyboard failure. So I never got to use the SSD in it.
Today, I am attempting to re-install the SSD into my desktop computer, but it has not worked out.

 

Windows 7 was successfully re-installed onto the SSD after it was formatted... but to my utmost horror, the new Windows 7 installation seems to be able to make its own decision on what "device 0" is.
My BIOS shows that the SSD is correctly connected to SATA Port 0 and the HDD is now connected to SATA port 1. This was how the disks were originally connected. Just last week when the HDD was the only disk in the computer, it I connected it to port 0 in place of the SSD.

 

Now the new Windows 7 installation on the SSD will insist on booting the old installation of Windows 7 on the HDD, even though the port number is no longer correct. After bootup into that old installation, the disk management will show the SSD as device 1, while the HDD as device 0.

The only way that I can ever boot properly into the new installation, is by disabling SATA port 1 from the BIOS. But that isn't what I want because I want to be able to erase that old Windows installation on the HDD and to use it as my data disk again.

 

The only time when it worked right, was when I eased the HDD with the diskpart utility's "clean" command, before recovering the partitions on it with Testdisk. The old Windows 7 partition's boot status was removed during that process.

When that happened and it booted up correctly for one or two times, I then started to delete the old Windows system files from the HDD and rebooted once more... to find that the Windows 7 installation on the SSD is once again trying to boot from the HDD. :/

But now it fails to because most of the old system files are gone and so I am stuck in a never-ending boot loop instead of even getting to the old desktop.

 

What was wrong to begin with? I don't know why Windows 7 is deciding on its own on what device 0 is. Neither do I know why is it always insisting booting that old OS that resides on a totally different disk, when it will boot itself correctly when its disk is the only one that is connected to the system...

I tried playing around with the boot order in the BIOS. But regardless of what I select (device 0 or 1), the HDD is always booted.

 

Is there a solution to this problem, without needing to format the HDD? I could format it, but now I have no idea how I am going to copy out the huge amout of data because I can't connect it to my PC.

At worst, I could try to acquire a USB 2.0 enclosure to use for pulling out the data... but I would like to hear of a more intelligent solution, instead of jumping the gun and going with the nuclear option.

 

Even after deleting everything that I can see (except for "Program Files (x86)" and "System Volume Information") with DIR /A, "BOOTREC /SCANOS" can still "see" the phantom Windows installation on the HDD ("D:\WINDOWS"). What gives?

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Well it is seemingly a misconfigured \boot\BCD and most probably the root of it is that you re-installed the Windows 7 on the SSD while the HDD was connected and some "automatic" settings were applied, including (possibly) a "wrong" drive letter assignment and the misconfigured \boot\BCD.

 

Disconnect the HDD.

Repair the Windows 7 on SSD (from a DVD installation disk or bootable USB).

Everything should return to "normal".

Verify that the computer boots form the SSD install fine, then re-add the HDD.

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, you're right to say that the HDD was connected while Windows 7 was being installed onto the SSD.

Anyway, I tried doing as you suggested, but it still didn't work. Not even after I nuked the whole HDD and SSD, plus suffered the data loss that came from doing that.

 

No matter how it was done, the Windows installation would fail to boot, once the HDD is connected to the computer. If I attempt to repair the installation's boot files with bootrec, it would report that no Windows installations are detected and so I can't do anything about it.

So after numerous other failed attempts (some due to an insecure SATA cable) to get this setup working properly as it once did, I realized that perhaps the Windows 7 setup doesn't support UEFI properly. When my BIOS has legacy USB support disabled, then booting from a USB device (my USB CD/DVD drive in this case) will be used for only EFI applications. I didn't realize that there would be a difference because I last installed Windows 7 on this machine (and this configuration) in 2013.
I came to that realization when every fresh installation would give an error 0xC0000225 on the first boot, until I manually select the SSD connected P0 to be booted via the non-EFI way (but strangely, it will work "properly" afterwards, until the HDD is connected).

 

So after I enabled USB Legacy Support in the BIOS and booted the Windows 7 installer without UEFI support, it would make a proper Windows 7 installation that can work right.

Thank you guys for your help!

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