Help with my wife's PC please, need to change the boot drive

[digitalwanderer]

I am rusty! Been playing with my wife's PC a bit since her HDD constantly beeping finally got too annoying for me, and I'm hitting a blank. :|

She has two HDDs, a Seagate and an WD. The WD is dying, shot, kaput. I've gotten everything off it I need and I just want to pull it, so I did.

Then I got the "BOOTMGR NOT FOUND" on reboot.

Her Windows 7 install is on the Seagate, but her boot stuff is all on the WD. I know there is a way to make the Seagate bootable into Windows 7 without a full reinstall, but I am drawing a total blank as to how.

Help?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Damn it.

Sorry for the bother.

 

[Grall]

I was about to say, just stick in your windows install dvd and run the repair thingy, but you beat me to it!

Good luck for the future, with the wifey's now WD-less PC!

 

[digitalwanderer]

The stupid HDD is still stupidly beeping away.

Her mobo doesn't like/won't recognize my USB DVD drive as a boot drive, I couldn't make a bootable USB flash drive out of the DVD, so I can't bloody fix this thing!

I was going to try this next, but I haven't had a chance yet as my wife is using her stupidly beeping PC. Anyone have a clue on how to do this WITHOUT a Windows DVD? Can't I do it within Win 7 somehow?

 

[Otto Dafe]

I don't understand, I thought the WD was the offending beeper and you removed it. Or are you saying that it now turns out it was the Seagate all along?

Edit: Wait, nvm, now I get it: you still need the Seagate because the boot manager is on there. hmmm. Where is the hidden system recovery partition? If you let Win7 or Vista create the system partition it would've made a recovery partition and hidden it from you.

 

[Grall]

You don't have an internal DVD reader tucked away somewhere in your household that you can plug into the wifey's PC for 5 minutes?

Go raid your kids' computers, or take a walk/drive to the nearest PC dealership. These things are practically a dime a dozen these days.

Or open up your external reader and extract the drive. 99% certainty it's a regular SATA unit connected to a USB bridge chip...

 

[Davros]

doesnt your bios support booting from usb ?
what board is it ?

 

[digitalwanderer]

I don't understand, I thought the WD was the offending beeper and you removed it. Or are you saying that it now turns out it was the Seagate all along?

Edit: Wait, nvm, now I get it: you still need the Seagate because the boot manager is on there. hmmm. Where is the hidden system recovery partition? If you let Win7 or Vista create the system partition it would've made a recovery partition and hidden it from you.

I don't do recovery, no hidden partition. It's the WD going bad and the Seagate that's good, but I need the boot files off the WD.

You don't have an internal DVD reader tucked away somewhere in your household that you can plug into the wifey's PC for 5 minutes?

Nope, gave up on 'em years ago.

Or open up your external reader and extract the drive. 99% certainty it's a regular SATA unit connected to a USB bridge chip...

Hmmmm, tempting. Might give that a try if all else fails.

doesnt your bios support booting from usb ?
what board is it ?

Technically it should, but I can't find it to save my arse. I think it's got an Asus M4A79 Deluxe in it, but my wife is using it again so I'm going by memory.

Thanks guys, this one has got me by the short and curlies.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Just busted the DVDr out of it's case, it's a bloody old IDE type....but I think I can make it work.

/me runs off happily to play!

 

[Davros]

bios
advanced -- usb
legacy usb support enabled
ehci handoff enabled

then boot --boot device priority

ps:
when you boot up just under
del for setup
you should see something like F9 boot menu

 

[digitalwanderer]

ehci handoff enabled

I don't recall seeing that, have to check how up to date her BIOS is later.

Doesn't matter, pulling the DVD from the USB enclosure and sticking it in there worked spiffy. Got the annoying WD out and she's all booted up on the Seagate just fine. I just gotta put the USB DVD back together and I think I'll call it a smashing success.

Thanks all, very much appreciated.

 

[Grall]

You're welcome!

Glad it worked out OK for you. *Cheer*

 

[digitalwanderer]

You have no idea how nice it was to be able to spend an evening on my computer last night without the "beep-beep, beep, beep.....beep-beep-beep-beep-beep" going on.

It was one of those non-issues for her that was driving me bonkers, thank you again for your help!