Two copies of Win7 on same PC

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I had Win 7 Pro running on one SSD and something screwed up the registry in a minor way so that some things didn’t work right any more. To get things fixed I added another SSD and installed a second Win 7 Pro copy on it. The idea was to run the two copies in a dual boot configuration while I got the second installation up to speed to replace the bad one. Now I have both installations running and I want to pull the original SSD from the system. If I simply disconnect the cables from the old SSD installation (labeled C: in Disk Management) and change the boot drive in BIOS to the new SSD the system does not want to boot from it. That makes sense to me because the old C: SSD was the bootable drive. Can someone please tell me how to make the new SSD (seen by system as partition G:) become bootable? I tried booting from the Windows DVD and using repair but that didn’t fix the problem either so I reconnected the old SSD and am now using the PC again. I considered trying to manipulate boot settings using BCD but I don’t know enough about the process to proceed on my own.

Thanks in advance for any help.

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I have both installations running and I want to pull the original SSD from the system. If I simply disconnect the cables from the old SSD installation (labeled C: in Disk Management) and change the boot drive in BIOS to the new SSD the system does not want to boot from it.

If I am hearing you correctly, you are presently able to boot into either installation. If that is so, your bootmgr on “C:” is looking at the BCD in the “Boot” folder on “C”, and there is likely no bootmgr or “Boot” folder on “G:”. So, I would copy bootmgr and the “Boot” folder from “C:” to “G:” and then pull “C:” and boot from what used to be “G:” (which will now be “C:”). Win7 will not let you do that copying while it is running, however, but you can still do that from within Win7 by using EasyBCD to install the Win7 loader to “G:” before pulling “C:”.
note: The new boot drive will also need to be “active” and I do not recall whether EasyBCD sets that up automatically.

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How did you try to repair it after booting up with the Windows DVD ?

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I simply chose the repair option from the Windows 7 Setup screen, then I chose Boot (may actually say Startup) from the sub-menu and pressed enter. The system then tries to repair itself and you have to restart the PC to see if things worked out in your favor. I did this two consecutive times and still could not get things to work.

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I simply chose the repair option from the Windows 7 Setup screen, then I chose Boot (may actually say Startup) from the sub-menu and pressed enter. The system then tries to repair itself and you have to restart the PC to see if things worked out in your favor. I did this two consecutive times and still could not get things to work.

Let’s see if an offboot sfc /scannow will fixt it.

Boot up with your install disk and select Repair your Computer which will take you to the Recovery Environment.

Select Command Prompt then enter bcdedit |find “osdevice”

Using whichever partition letter it returns enter (assuming C: ) sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C: /offwindir=C:Windows and see what that reports.

While SSD failure is reported as being only 30% to that of HDDs, run HD Sentinel against the one with the buggy Win 7 just as a belt & braces.

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I simply chose the repair option from the Windows 7 Setup screen, then I chose Boot (may actually say Startup) from the sub-menu and pressed enter. The system then tries to repair itself and you have to restart the PC to see if things worked out in your favor. I did this two consecutive times and still could not get things to work.

Win7 can be located on any partition on any drive, but Win7’s startup repair only works if the Win7 installation is somewhere on the first drive in the system. Also, each Win7 installation’s location is identified by the partition’s unique UUID recorded in the BCD and not by any drive number or partition letter.

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The ‘new’ SSD needs to plugged into the same motherboard connector that the ‘old’ SSD was plugged into. Bootmgr looks first for drive number, not letter. In this case, it’s probably drive 0, but if you simply unplugged the ‘old’ SSD (drive 0) your ‘new’ SSD is probably drive 1 (or drive 2, if your optical drive is also SATA and plugged into the drive 1 connector).

Windows 7 looks for the drive number where Windows is supposed to be installed, then assigns that drive as drive C: To recap, you need to copy the file “bootmgr” from the root of the ‘old’ SSD to the root of the ‘new’ SSD, then plug the ‘new’ SSD into the connector where the ‘old’ SSD was plugged.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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As the new drive was never bootable before it is probably lacking a master boot record (MBR)

See if this helps

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/win7-windows-7-mbr,10036.html

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You might also need to set the boot partition of the new SSD to active after copying the bootmgr from the old SSD.

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Windows CANNOT handle SATA correctly.
Disks are numbered “In order of enumeration”, (which means whatever Microsoft want it to mean)
and that is chaotic.

My SSD is connected to the correct SATA channel/port,
BUT is almost never seen as Disk 0.
Instead upon a power-up / cold start it is “enumerated” last and is Disk number 2,
BUT
a reboot / hot start brings it in as number 1 or even number 0.

Regardless of Disk number, the SSD always boots and the pre-SSD installation of Windows 7 lies dormant on my HDD UNTIL I reconfigure my BIOS.

The MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO TO AVOID CONFUSION
is to change the “System Volume Labels” to distinguish between the various Disks and Partitions.
Disk numbers can vary on SATA Disks
Partition Letters are an abomination – variables in the registry.
“System Volume Labels” are fixed on the Disk media and remain the same for Windows and for all Boot Rescue and Installation CD’s.

ALSO
It is safer to cancel the “Active” flag from the partition(s) you are not intending to boot.

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Hello and thank you to everyone who helped me solve this problem. Using bbearen’s suggestion I copied the “Boot” folder and the “bootmgr” files from my Win 7 DVD to the root folder of the new drive labeled ”G” by the system. I then unplugged the C drive and connected its cables to the G drive. Next I went into BIOS and made the new SSD (labeled G) the primary boot drive. I put loaded the DVD and rebooted. When the system then rebooted from the DVD I chose the repair boot option and proceeded as instructed and everything was fixed in that one step. I do have a new problem that I want to address here but I will do it in a new thread to avoid a lot of confusion.
Thanks again, I love “Windows Secrets.”

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Glad you got it sorted out, and thanks for posting your solution. That might come in handy for someone else in the future.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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