The system has two hard drives with a switch.

Both drives are having errors installing Windows 7 Pro again.

It is @ 7 years old.

Any ideas what's happening?

 

Switch? What switch?

Remove second hd. This way you only have 1 hd in the system, install Win. Place second hd back into the system.

 

There's just called hard drive switches.

Has knob with 3 positions. Hard drive 1/Hard drive 2/Both. I never put it on both.

So you can isolate operating systems.

 

Shteil Thanks

Windows won't boot on one drive. Says 'boot sector error'.

Other hard drive it is hit and miss installing.

I think the motherboard or cpu, memory are heading south.

I will get another motherboard over here and swap test that.

One drive has fairly important information on it.

'Work !!' Maynard J Krebs

 

Update.

Booting drive 1. It won't start windows. It leaves you at 'Insert boot media...'

Press F8, select Safe Mode and it boots.

I am going to do that a couple times and make sure hardware is stable.

Work my way through other Advanced Boot options.

 

Shteil Thanks

Windows won't boot on one drive. Says 'boot sector error'.

Other hard drive it is hit and miss installing.

I think the motherboard or cpu, memory are heading south.

I will get another motherboard over here and swap test that.

One drive has fairly important information on it.

'Work !!' Maynard J Krebs

I think it is the other way around. the drives are going bad. win install disk has some repair/rescue functionality. there is also linux based rescue/copy disks now that you can use to copy materials.

One interesting option is to use clonezilla to clone disk/partition to a new hd. A word of warning about clonezilla. You can clone a whole drive and it will be bootable. If you clone only a partition, you can not make it bootable. So. If you have same size or larger hd, you can use clonezilla to clone your old hd to new hd and new hd will be bootable so you can just run the computer of the new hd. Spend 40-50-60 bucks on new hd is cheaper (in time and money) than replacing the hardware of a whole pc.

 

You can use another computer to access the disk to copy important data. I use an IDE/SATA to USB adapter so I don't need to open up the computer to install the drive.

 

Thanks Shteil

Just seems a little improbable that they would both go out at once.

I have been changing formating on drive 2 by testing Unix and Linux OS's.

That drive got balky installing Windows first.

How do you get to format on Windows install disk?

 

Hello,

If a disk does not boot, there is most times a problem with the boot sector of the disk.
In that sector the master boot record is stored:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record
Here is a way to "repair" this:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee851681.aspx

Bertus

 

Thank you DL

'use another computer'

That reminds me I need to get a few 'diagnostic tools'.

Will get a known good hard drive over here.

'IDE/SATA to USB adapter'

External hard drive. Yep! Another good thing to keep around.

Plus spare motherboard and video card. CPU's are two specific. Memory would probably help. Actually have some

Think I will try putting swapping memory back in.

Changed it out a couple months ago. Also just popped new memory once.

Didn't check and reseat. Did not mem check it.

 

Thank you Bertus

The lastest problem with Drive 1 does give error message about boot sector.

I will give it a shot.

 

did you let windows format the disk you select to use?

 

BR Thank you!

Yes. I do not think it did a full format.

Today on Drive 2 I installed PCBSD.

It installed fine. So I think MBR did get scrambled.

Looks like hardware is okay except for MBR of one drive so far.

Windows is not playing nice with it.

Drive 1. I will keep working on.

 

Getting a new hard drive for Drive 1.

It does not show in BIOS.

That is usually a sign it has big problems.

Bought a leftover new drive. Got a pretty good deal on it.

It was a deal we couldn't refuse.

 

Anybody know of a good free MBR repair tool that makes a boot disk?

Going to see if I can save data on the one drive.

 

If you have win7 disk: https://neosmart.net/wiki/fix-mbr/#Fix_the_MBR_in_Windows_7

 

It has been such a long time.......I believe any windows installation disk can do that. Each disk has a repair option....to load in it's version of dos. And depending on that version.....there are commands......that can edit and repair the MBR.

 

Shteii Thank you!

Will test the drive with Win 7 Pro install disk.

Use the dos prompt window.

That looks like a good product.

Seems like to get a boot disk you have to pay.

Twenty dollars isn't too bad.

 

BR Thank you.

Yes. Will go that route first.

 

personal opinion - lose the switch