Windows 7 boot problem, multiple hard disks

In the Disk Manager, two hard drves are shown:

• C: (160 GB) (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) which contains Windows 7


• D: (500 GB) (System, Active, Primary Partition)

When I remove D: and start it shows "DISK boot failure, insert system disk and ...".

This is because System Reserved Files is only on D:. How can I move that to C:?

Answer

You don't need to move all your data just to get your Windows booted again, that's so unnecessary.

Such actions are the result of not reading official Microsoft documentation, which should be your first stop whenever you have a problem with Windows. All the commands I'm going to use there are properly documented by Microsoft, thus doing a quick X Command-Line Options site:microsoft.com where X is the command gives you information about how these tools work and their options...

Good luck!

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Your C: drive doesn't know how to boot, you can easily solve this:

• Remove the D: drive, of course.




• Start into the Windows 7 Installation Medium.




• Go to the Recovery Environment and start Command Prompt.




• Run the following: BootRec /FixMBR && BootRec /FixBoot && BootRec /RebuildBCD

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Also, to really ensure that the boot sector works, this will ensure that BOOTMGR is loaded when boot:

• Run BootSect /NT60 ALL /Force /MBR

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Also, mark the boot partition as active again:

• Run DiskPart




• Type List Disk followed by ENTER.




• Type Select Disk X (where X is the 160 GB disk) followed by ENTER.




• Type List Partition followed by ENTER.




• Type Select Partition Y (where Y is your boot partition) followed by ENTER.




• Type Active followed by ENTER.

Been there, done that, works even if the System Reserved partition is missing (which hosts recovery).