boot problem Help Please - Resurrect old Win7 boot

[RobV1306]

Hi Guys,

 

So I've recently gotten round to building up my new tower and couldn't be happier - Win10 on a WD Black NVMe Drive, i7-9700k @ 4.9GHz, GTX 1060 6Gb etc etc. My problem comes in that I want to have a dual boot option from my old tower so I can access a load of stuff I have on there when I want to. I figured this would be easy. It should be in theory. However, my old rig started life as a HP Enterprise system. It ran what I believe to be a cache raid system whereby it has a tiny 20Gb Intel SSD, as well as the 500Gb spinning disc. The way it was explained to me at the time was that read and write went to the SSD first and then was written to the HDD. This brings me onto the issue.

 

When I plug in my HDD to my new rig and mash F2 to get into the BIOS, the HDD is not there as a boot option!

 

Exiting from that and heading into my Win10 boot, it allows me to see the Win7 drive. I can see the OS files. I can see the public documents (although not the documents of specific users). When I enter the disc management tool in Win10, I can see the partitions of the HDD, including one which shows as OS, however underneath it, it only says "Primary Partition". The "boot, pagefile and crash dump" monikers are missing. When I plug in the old 20Gb SSD, there's nothing on it. It just shows as "Unallocated".

 

It seems to me that my MBR has gone missing somewhere along the line here and since I have no experience of undoing the witchcraft that seems to be cache raid, I'm reaching out for help. Can anyone explain how I can make my old HDD bootable again?

 

Couple more points to note: I've not got an image or backup of the Win7 disc so simply doing a fresh install is not an option. Also, the tipping point for me building a new rig was the power supply failing on the old tower. Since it's HP Enterprise and therefore proprietary (rip off merchants!!!), I cannot even plug the old drives in back the way they were and do anything from the old system.

 

Anyone any ideas? All help appreciated.

 

All the best,

 

Rob

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Windows

***

 

This is way over my head, but just making sure. You have set UEFI+Legacy as boot option in BIOS?

[RobV1306]

No, I haven't. I'm not aware of this setting. I hope you'll excuse my ignorance but what does UEFI + Legacy do?

[Kilrah]

It allows also booting from an older operating system that was not configured for UEFI.

 

But in your case I would think you are SOL if you cannot get the original system working again. The whole principle of the SSD cache is that some of the data will be on the SSD, possibly even pending writes that haven't been committed to the HDD yet, so the HDD is unusable on its own. If you could boot the old system you could see if it's possible to disable the SSD cache, it's probably not the case but at least you could create an image of the whole volume you could then restore to only the HDD.

 

If you connected the HDD to the new PC and tried to do things with it it's very much possible the old system won't even boot either though, if anything on the HDD has changed the RAID controller will see a mismatch between the SSD and HDD compared to what it expects and just throw that the volume is corrupted.

[homeap5]

 Well, I'll try to help (if I good understand your post).

 

1. You have hard drive with all OS files that you can see under win10. That is good.

2. Your drive is probably (98%) in MBR mode (you can check it using MiniTool Partition Wizard to be 100% sure) - that is good too.

3. Your original boot partition is somewhere else - that is not a big problem too. All you need is...

4. ...use program called EasyBCD and install BCD on your hard drive. Be careful with every step - choose proper drive before you do that!

4b. You don't must create any additional partitions - win7 in legacy mode can use only single partition and it may be partition for both - boot and data.

5. Make sure partition is active and change bios to UEFI+Legacy.

 

Now some more troubleshoot parts:

 

6. If you experience BSOD - download Paragon Adaptive Restore ISO, use Rufus to prepare USB with that tool, boot it with only win7 drive connected and select "Adjust OS". After few seconds you should be able to boot your old win7 installation. In case any problems with finding Paragon Adaptive Restore - PM me.

7. If your motherboard is new, you may have problems with your mouse and keyboard. So you'll need PS2 mouse and/or keyboard to install USB drivers after first boot.

 

BEFORE YOU EVEN START:

0. If you have new motherboard and have no PS2 mouse and/or keyboard, then you can boot your system on old computer, install UltraVNC (for example) server and install UltraVNC on your Android smartphone (or iPhone, or even Windows Phone). This way you'll have control over your system. Do it before you start whole procedure.

EDIT: I see you cannot boot on old computer, so... you can buy cheapest, crappiest PCI-E USB controller and use it. Old, crappy USB controller should be detected in Windows 7 without problem - then just plug mouse and keyboard to it and this way you'll be able to install drivers. You can also try to put some bat files in startup folder - with proper parameters they should install USB drivers without prompt.

 

EDIT2: Useful link: link. So you can create directory "install", extract USB drivers there and then write bat file with "c:\install\Setup.exe -b -s" inside. Then boot your win7 machine. I never tested that because I have ps2 keyboard and mouse.

 

ALTERNATIVE:

You can try skip 4 and 4b and use Paragon Adaptive Restore for fix boot - it should be able to add needed files too.

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, homeap5 said:

3. Your original boot partition is somewhere else - that is not a big problem too. All you need is..

The original boot partition isn't somewhere else, but the drive is part of a pair with an SSD managed by a hardware controller. So the whole data/volume is only valid when both are available, and what's on what is only known by the controller...

[homeap5]

1 minute ago, Kilrah said:

The original boot partition isn't somewhere else, but the drive is part of a pair with an SSD managed by a hardware controller. So the whole data/volume is only valid when both are available, and what's on what is only known by the controller...

Not for sure. You cannot read drive if they was configured the way that SSD contains some data and hdd rest. OP assume that it's a problem, but I don't read that he knows for sure how drives are setup. And maybe originally it was prepared that way, but now OP says that he can see everything on that drive, except can't boot. Is worth try my method.

[Kilrah]

Hard to know for sure indeed, but even if the controller makes the drive "standalone" if there is a write cache then things that have been modified might not be committed to the disk, including Windows files that are needed.

 

In any case OP should copy any important files on that drive somewhere else before trying stuff.

[homeap5]

This trying do not remove any files. It's not format. Of course backup is always good thing to do, even recommended, but not really required.

[RobV1306]

Hey guys.

 

Thanks for the feedback. So the first thing I tried was your suggestion to change the BIOS to allow UEFI + Legacy. That only got me so far.

 

I got to the point where the Win7 "Starting Windows" screen came up, but right as the coloured balls started flying around to create the Windows logo, it bluescreens. It does show an error message but it reboots so fast that I cannot read it. The next time I try and boot into that drive, it brings up startup repair. I've tried this a few times and I think it's decided it cannot fix the issue using the Microsoft Startup Repair software.

 

So that brings everyone up to date.

 

Any more suggestions?

 

My thoughts are that it may still be that somehow the MBR or similar is missing and that's the only problem since it does try and boot and is now recognised as a boot option, it simply cannot get all the way into Windows.

 

Thoughts?

 

Cheers for all the help by the way - it's really appreciated.

[Kilrah]

If you got the spinning balls you're past all the loader stuff. It's choking either becasue something is corrupted or your hardware is too different from the original. Transferring an install from a PC to another is never great, and with Win7 was less likely to work than with 10. 

[RobV1306]

I'm still hopeful that nothing is corrupted based on the fact that I seem to be able to access stuff.

 

Any tricks for getting round the differing hardware?

[homeap5]

Do you even read my post? I give you solution for bsod. Paragon Adaptive Restore. Are my advices too difficult?

 

I copy part of my post for you, so it will be easier if you don't want to read my whole post:

 

6. If you experience BSOD - download Paragon Adaptive Restore ISO, use Rufus to prepare USB with that tool, boot it with only win7 drive connected and select "Adjust OS". After few seconds you should be able to boot your old win7 installation. In case any problems with finding Paragon Adaptive Restore - PM me.

7. If your motherboard is new, you may have problems with your mouse and keyboard. So you'll need PS2 mouse and/or keyboard to install USB drivers after first boot.

 

You may also have problems using Paragon Adaptive Restore without ps2 mouse and/or keyboard. I hope you have one.

[TechQuicker]

On 4/26/2020 at 6:12 PM, RobV1306 said:

Hi Guys,

 

So I've recently gotten round to building up my new tower and couldn't be happier - Win10 on a WD Black NVMe Drive, i7-9700k @ 4.9GHz, GTX 1060 6Gb etc etc. My problem comes in that I want to have a dual boot option from my old tower so I can access a load of stuff I have on there when I want to. I figured this would be easy. It should be in theory. However, my old rig started life as a HP Enterprise system. It ran what I believe to be a cache raid system whereby it has a tiny 20Gb Intel SSD, as well as the 500Gb spinning disc. The way it was explained to me at the time was that read and write went to the SSD first and then was written to the HDD. This brings me onto the issue.

 

When I plug in my HDD to my new rig and mash F2 to get into the BIOS, the HDD is not there as a boot option!

 

Exiting from that and heading into my Win10 boot, it allows me to see the Win7 drive. I can see the OS files. I can see the public documents (although not the documents of specific users). When I enter the disc management tool in Win10, I can see the partitions of the HDD, including one which shows as OS, however underneath it, it only says "Primary Partition". The "boot, pagefile and crash dump" monikers are missing. When I plug in the old 20Gb SSD, there's nothing on it. It just shows as "Unallocated".

 

It seems to me that my MBR has gone missing somewhere along the line here and since I have no experience of undoing the witchcraft that seems to be cache raid, I'm reaching out for help. Can anyone explain how I can make my old HDD bootable again?

 

Couple more points to note: I've not got an image or backup of the Win7 disc so simply doing a fresh install is not an option. Also, the tipping point for me building a new rig was the power supply failing on the old tower. Since it's HP Enterprise and therefore proprietary (rip off merchants!!!), I cannot even plug the old drives in back the way they were and do anything from the old system.

 

Anyone any ideas? All help appreciated.

 

All the best,

 

Rob

Hi @RobV1306,

If you still have the setup disc, insert it and enter BIOS. Change the boot order to make the CD the priority and then save and exit BIOS. If prompted, press a key to boot from cd. Continue until it says install now. Dont press install but instead press repair your computer. Next, choose Command Prompt. When it loads, type (without inverted commas) 'bootrec /fixmbr'. After this, type 'bootrec /fixboot'. Next, type 'shutdown /r'. Enter BIOS, change the boot order/priority to the drive with the OS installed on it and save and exit the BIOS again. Your PC should now be mended.

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

TechQuicker 

 

Also, I am sorry if I have missed something you have written. 

[homeap5]

8 minutes ago, TechQuicker said:

Hi @RobV1306,

If you still have the setup disc, insert it and enter BIOS. Change the boot order to make the CD the priority and then save and exit BIOS. If prompted, press a key to boot from cd. Continue until it says install now. Dont press install but instead press repair your computer. Next, choose Command Prompt. When it loads, type (without inverted commas) 'bootrec /fixmbr'. After this, type 'bootrec /fixboot'. Next, type 'shutdown /r'. Enter BIOS, change the boot order/priority to the drive with the OS installed on it and save and exit the BIOS again. Your PC should now be mended.

 

Thanks,

TechQuicker 

Also, I am sorry if I have missed something you have written. 

Useless. His drive boots (OP fix this already). Problem is with bluescreen. I give him proper solution.

[RobV1306]

Hi Guys,

 

Thanks for the replies.

 

Sorry @homeap5, I'll admit I had missed where you talked about BSOD on your first post. I was trying to make sure I took things nice and slow rather than getting something wrong and ruining my drive. I'll try and dig out a USB drive and try the Paragon Adaptive Restore ISO.

 

Hopefully that'll fix it. I'll let you know

[homeap5]

I hope you read also about ps2 mouse/keyboard.

 

 

[RobV1306]

@homeap5 - yeah, I did. Believe it or not, I already use a PS2 keyboard and mouse.

[homeap5]

6 minutes ago, RobV1306 said:

@homeap5 - yeah, I did. Believe it or not, I already use a PS2 keyboard and mouse.

I believe, why not.

So adjusting win7 will be much easier for you. If you have problem with finding Paragon - let me know (pm). I can give you link.

[RobV1306]

So I have progress. I ran the Paragon software and the Win7 system now boots. However, I get a whole raft of other error messages. I've attached them to this post.

 

One of the problems is that loads of my drivers aren't present, including the ones for the onboard ethernet and all my USB dongle versions so getting onto the internet is currently impossible. However, I'm sure I can sort that out with some jiggery pokery - I hope. It may be a little more difficult since I have no drivers for any of the USBs anywhere in the system so no matter what I plug in, it won't recognise it. I also don't have an optical drive in this machine either so thats out.

 

But the main problem seems to be Windows throwing something of a hissy fit. I don't know if this is just because it can't connect to the internet but it gives me the error messages I've attached.

 

Any of you come across these issues before?

 

Thanks again for the ongoing help.

 

Cheers,

 

Rob

[Kilrah]

Windows deactivates itself when it sees major hardware changes.

 

But here it also seems to not like what Paragon changed to make it work.

[homeap5]

For removing unused devices use Ghostbuster tool. It's pretty easy.

 

Also - you should wait a little longer because your Windows installs drivers after first boot. It's not always focused so you need to look at tray.

 

Check device manager, install missing drivers, don't worry so much about old ones and your system will be good very soon. After some time and few restarts at least.

 

All that informations are because you changed hardware and you have now unactivated Windows.

 

Remember that you have access to that drive using your win10, so you can write drivers on this hdd from win10. Just create some folder and grand access to everyone.

 

Btw. what happens when you log off and try to log on to your normal account?

[RobV1306]

So I've tried logging in and out again a number of times and I'm getting nothing. It just repeats the same error over and over.

 

I figure that if I can just get onto the internet, a lot of these problems are fixable but despite copying over ALL my driver's from my Win10 build, it refuses to recognise any of them.

[homeap5]

I think problem is with activation anyway. Is hard to suggest any real solution. You may try to boot this system in safe mode and try to solve problems then. Try to reactivate your Win7 - who knows, maybe it allows you.

[RobV1306]

But the key problem is that I can't activate windows without an internet connection and I can't get an internet connection without drivers.

 

I really appreciate your help man but I'm starting to think this might be something of a lost cause.