windows 7 boot disk not visible at startup [Archive]

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mmtaraval

Aug 30, 2009, 08:00 PM

Hi all, a little long winded but here goes...

I recently installed windows 7 (7001) on a new drive (750gb) and re-formatted my old windows 7 drive (80gb) to be used as a backup for OS X. After that the windows boot drive was not available at start-up. Here is how it went:

original set up:
HD (os x)
Windows drive (80gb)

after new drive:
HD (os x)
windows drive (80gb and 750gb) I had windows 7 installed on both drives and at windows boot was given two choices of windows 7.

This worked fine until I reformatted the old 80gb drive to be a second mac drive and at start-up the windows boot drive was not visible only HD (os x). The windows drive is still visible on the os x desktop (all files are visible) but not under "disk startup" in the preferences pane.

current set-up:
HD (os x)
mac backup (80gb)
windows 7 (750gb) not bootable

I tried booting from windows 7 disk to repair but it does not recognize any bootable windows drive. Should I go through bootcamp utility to repair the windows drive?

Any help would be appreciated greatly.

Infrared

Aug 30, 2009, 08:09 PM

Can you make sure your Windows 7 partition is marked as active?

'fdisk' under OS X will tell you:

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/fdisk.8.html

If it's not marked active, it needs to be.

mmtaraval

Aug 30, 2009, 08:35 PM

thanks I'll try that when I get home.

mmtaraval

Aug 30, 2009, 11:43 PM

A little over my head Infrared. I entered fdisk in terminal but I'm at a lost for how to check if the disk is active or not.

mmtaraval

Aug 31, 2009, 12:53 AM

OK, I booted from my os x dvd opened terminal ran fdisk, activated my windows partition and the windows drive is now showing but with a bootmgr missing prompt. Next step is to run the repair/recovery from the windows dvd to fix that. Thanks for the heads-up Infrared.

Infrared

Aug 31, 2009, 02:44 PM