Weird Insatll Issues on Windows 7

[devinator]

Hi,

I have a machine with Vista on it that is no longer booting consistently. I believe the HD is going bad. First thing I tried was to load the Vista CD to do a repair. When putting the CD in the drive I can't get it to boot from the CD even though the bios is set up boot from the CD first. Strangely, when I do have Vista running, if I load the Vista CD in the drive, the CD is not recognized. If I load a music CD or other CD's it will recognize them. My second solution idea was to load Windows 7 on a new HD. I connected the new HD, loaded the Window 7 CD into the drawer and again, it won't see the CD or boot from it. I get the "disk boot failure" message. So I got the machine to boot in Vista, was able to see the new HD and tried loading Windows 7 to the new drive but I still won't see the Windows 7 CD. I then made a copy of the Windows 7 CD onto a compact flash card and was able to load it onto the new HD using the Windows 7 setup folder on the compact flash card. Windows 7 is working fine on the new HD. Except that it won't boot into Windows 7 without the old HD installed in the machine. The process is as follows. Turn on the machine. Before booting up I'm now given the option to boot in Windows 7 or Vista whether the old drive is installed or not. If the old drive is not installed, it won't boot to Windows 7. I just get the "disk boot failure" message. If I do have the old HD installed, it will boot fine into Windows 7. Basically I have a machine that works but in a hacked sort of manner. Any idea on how to get the machine to boot up without the old HD installed?

Thanks, DD

[Gecko]

devinator,

Simply disconnect your Vista drive and boot from your win7 dvd.
If prompted, press any key to start Windows from the installation disc.
Choose your language settings, and then click Next.
Click Repair your computer.
Select the operating system you want to repair Win 7, and then click Next.
On the System Recovery Options menu, click Startup Repair. Startup Repair will prompt you to make choices as it fixes the boot problem, and if necessary, it might restart your computer as it makes repairs.

[devinator]

Thanks. I'll give that a try.