Solved Dual Boot, then removed old HD now no boot at all

minorhero

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I had windows 7 running on my computer. When windows 8 came out I used a second harddrive as the windows 8 installation drive. Windows 8 automatically setup a dual boot system where every time I started the computer it took me a windows screen where I could select either windows 7 or windows 8. This has been going on since Windows 8 was released.

I decided it was getting old so I decided it was time to remove the old windows 7 harddrive. I tried doing it inside the windows 8 dual boot screen but could not find an option. So I decided to reformat the windows 7 harddrive. I did this in command prompt mode. After doing so when my computer restarted it said it could not find any harddrive to boot. Windows 8 is installed on the other harddrive, the one that was not reformatted. So how do I get it to start using that harddrive as the boot drive? I checked my bios and even physically disconnected the old HD that had windows 7 on it, but none of that seemed to help even though the Windows 8 HD is definitely in the boot order in the bios.

I don't even know how to begin googling this problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
You apparently overlooked a little detail. The bootmgr of Windows 8 was sitting on the Windows 7 disk. That was because you did not disconnect the Windows 7 disk when you installed Windows 8.

Until we know what's left on your disk, it's hard to tell how to fix it. Use the bootable CD of Partition Wizard and take a picture of what it shows.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Vista and Win7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    2xHP, 2xGateway, 1xDell, 1xSony
    Hard Drives
    5 SSDs and 12 HDs
If you have the Windows 8 on DVD or USB then just boot it from there and select repair my PC, it should fix the problem for you. I've done it before.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    8.1x64PWMC Ubuntu14.04x64 MintMate17x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Brewed
    CPU
    I7 4970K OC'ed @4.7 GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI-Z97
    Memory
    16 GB G-Skill Trident X @2400MHZ
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
    Sound Card
    X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual HP-W2408
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200
    Hard Drives
    256 GB M2 sm951, (2) 500GB 850EVO, 5TB, 2 TB Seagate
    PSU
    Antec 850W
    Case
    Antec 1200
    Cooling
    Danger Den H20
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech Performance Mouse MX
    Internet Speed
    35/12mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
If you have the Windows 8 on DVD or USB then just boot it from there and select repair my PC, it should fix the problem for you. I've done it before.
If he has no EFI partition, that will most likely not work. But we shall see.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Vista and Win7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    2xHP, 2xGateway, 1xDell, 1xSony
    Hard Drives
    5 SSDs and 12 HDs
I made a boot cd as you suggested but I do not know exactly what you want a picture of. I found an option to set the partition as the windows boot partition but when I select that I receive an error that says "failed to find windows directory" there is of course a windows directory on that partition but /shrug. I also found an option to edit the boot.ini file but it could not find a boot.ini file on that partition.

I do own a DVD version of windows 8. That being said, it is packed in some boxes and in a storage unit (probably under every last one of the boxes in there if my luck runs true).
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Never mind the problem is now solved. I made a recovery drive (512mb version) on my other windows 8 laptop. I then used it to repair my PC and it worked in seconds. Thanks folks for the help. Much appreciated. Last night I was very frustrated when I found out I blew away my own darn computer ;).
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
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