[HELP] Windows won't boot after removing an unused harddrive

[Aersol]

Ok, so I recently removed a 750GB 2.5" from my main rig to throw into my laptop. My main OS (Windows 7) is loaded onto a 2x 120GB Intel 520 series RAID0 array. After removing the drive and trying to boot Windows normally, I am greeted with a screen that looks like this:[ATTACH=CONFIG]n3119[/ATTACH]

I've pretty much attempted all of the obvious solutions. I've made sure that the RAID array is my first boot priority in BIOS. I've tried inserting a Windows disc and repairing Windows, however the operating system doesn't even show up in there. Intel Matrix Storage Manager reports that my RAID array is fully functional, bootable, and healthy.

Any ideas? I've never really experienced a problem like this before, and researching online has retrieved minimal results.

Thanks

EDIT: Could it be because my boot manager was on the drive that I removed? I installed Windows with a couple of harddrives plugged in

[lutzee]

Yes, you've removed the drive the MBR was on probably. i'f you've wiped it you will need a windows install disk to recover it.

[Whaler_99]

Yep - sounds like you pulled your boot drive and Windows isn't actually installed on the RAID0 array...

[Aersol]

Yes' date=' you've removed the drive the MBR was on probably. i'f you've wiped it you will need a windows install disk to recover it.[/quote']

I haven't wiped the drive, and I tried reinstalling the drive back into my main rig to see if the problem fixed, however I still got the same error message.

Next thing I tried was booting to DISKPART to see if the RAID array was marked as "Active". After I marked it as active, I rebooted and am now getting this error: http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/7655/20130211111657.jpg

So I went into startup repair to see if that helped at all, and it says it cannot identify the problem. So now I'm stuck again

[lutzee]

Make sure you have the 750GB drive set as priority in the BIOS, not much else i can suggest other than what i have already said

[BenHTBDT]

Try fixing the MBR via command promt

BootRec.exe /fixmbr

Some other commands to substitute for fixmbr

/FixBoot. Writes a boot sector onto the system partition to start Windows

/ScanOs. Scans all disks for Windows installations and displays them to you.

/RebuildBcd. Scans all disks for Windows installations and prompts you to pick the ones you want to add to the BCD.

+1!

Make sure to use /RebuildBCD as well as fixboot. My guess is the System partition was NOT on the raid array, and when he did startup repair with the drive out it tried to add another system partition and just messed stuff up. Try those and report back. Also, while in the recovery CMD prompt, try running CHKDSK X: /r /f where X is the drive letter for your raid array. (NOTE: It may not be C: in the recovery mode). Easiest way to check is to go C: [Enter] then dir [enter] if it looks like your root drive, thats it. If not, continue up the letters. That may take awhile, but i've seen it fix corruptions and make things boot again.

[Aersol]

Try fixing the MBR via command promt BootRec.exe /fixmbr Some other commands to substitute for fixmbr /FixBoot. Writes a boot sector onto the system partition to start Windows /ScanOs. Scans all disks for Windows installations and displays them to you. /RebuildBcd. Scans all disks for Windows installations and prompts you to pick the ones you want to add to the BCD.

Tried every one of these commands. "FixMbr" and "RebuildBcd" said that they completed successfully, however I still get the BOOTMGR error upon booting. One thing to note is that when I did the "ScanOs" command, it didn't detect my Windows.

[Aersol]

Still looking for help

[ha1o2surfer]

Some people gave some good advice but this is actually a bootmgr issue not an MBR issue so any repair MBR commands will not do a thing, as you saw.. Run these commands from a Windows PE disk. This may work from startup repair but looking at that error, you may not be able to get to the repair section of windows. lol if you do not know how to make a PE disk, post back

1)bootsect /nt60 (this creates the bootmgr files on the drive of your choosing)

2)bcdboot c:\windows /s c: (this adds the windows install to the bootmgr)

[Aersol]

halo2surfer, I tried that too and it did not work. Thanks for the advice though. What I ended up doing was buying a new SSD for my laptop, then after I transferred all of the important data from the storage drive, I installed the storage drive back into my desktop. I then installed Windows onto the storage drive, and after it completed, I got a weird error message (can't remember exactly what it said). So I rebooted in attempt to restart the Windows installation, and to my surprise, a Boot Manager prompted me to select between 2 different Windows 7 installations. One of them was my old OS.

Long story short, I was able to get everything back to normal without any data loss :)