lost access to w7 drives

sorry for the confusion, I'm being a user and not providing all of the needed details

No need for you to apologize. We should have asked.

That said, I have to bow out as I am out of ideas to suggest here. The fact you can access all of the drives in the box, and the connected external drive tells me the hardware is good.

When you ran CCleaner, was it just the Cleaner, or the Registry Cleaner too?

On that one I have to say "I don't know" it was the default selection as I was just running it to confirm that the new install was complete and correct. As mentioned, I looked at the list and allowed it to do its thing and continued on with other tasks.

Dick

On that one I have to say "I don't know" it was the default selection

There's no way you wouldn't know. If you call up CCleaner, you will see Cleaner and Registry are separate features that must be run separately. If you run "Cleaner" that does not cause the "Registry" Cleaner to run and vice versa.

Not that I have anything against CCleaner's Registry Cleaner (I don't - if used properly). But if you ran it, it prompts to backup the Registry before making changes.

given that information - I did not run the registry cleaner as I "always" backup the registry before playing in there too many sad experiences in the past Dick

given that information - I did not run the registry cleaner as I "always" backup the registry before playing in there
too many sad experiences in the past

Dick

It is good you always backup the Registry, and while CCleaner's Registry cleaner is the only one I feel comfortable using - it is only to keep my systems running smoothly, never to fix a broken computer, and that's where problems comes.

opps my mistake, no idea now how i came to the conclusion you only had 1 drive in there. it's an odd one that seems to point to the bootloader/win 8/uefi and secure boot again as the problem, because neither win 7 os on separate hard drives will boot, even tho it seems to go through the motions when chosen but i am totally confused as to how/why ccleaner would have caused such an issue. don't see how, even if you'd fixed the registry with cc that could have had an effect on booting the other win 7 os, most i'd expect is just that one win 7 os to stop working correctly. unless of course in your efforts to fix the first win 7 os it messed up the bootloader so the 2nd win 7 os stopped booting. shrugs. so looks like we might be back to using the win 8 os to fix the bootloader then with luck the second win7 os will boot as normal but the main win 7 os may still be un-bootable because of corrupted files/registry or something needing a separate fix for it alone. please see if you can stop the restart anyway and lets see the bsd error when trying to boot both win 7 os, that should point out where to look for the problems.

bsod stopped! The usual 'a problem has been detected and . . . Do a virus check remove any new HDDs or controllers - none changed/added run CHKDSK /F - did that once with no errors reported the restart still fails will see if I can do a w8 startup repair and report back with the results Dick

update; full disk virus scan Norton - no threats found no new hardware no changes to existing hardware CHKDSK /F run on the primary drive - no errors reported boot from w8 install disk w7 prime repair attempt - failed w8 repair attempt - failed enough for tonight Dick

mmm win 8 failed to repair the mbr and the bootloader of the first boot drive as seen by bios. any details on why it failed? sorry can't be of more help, i just don't know enough about windows in general, but that's where i believe at least half your problem is, the other half might be your main win 7 os was corrupted in the first place by cc but that should have been fixed when you did a restore from backup. some ideas to try, 1. go into your uefi bios and turn off "secure boot" or whatever it may be called (don't forget to turn it back on after testing.) then try booting both the win 7os again, doubt win 8 will boot now tho because like digerati said earlier it needs secure boot to be enabled before it will boot. 2: disconnect the sata cables to the drives, connect just one drive and re-start the pc, do this for each drive in turn, i believe 2 of the drives should be able to boot to the os on it, the win 8 os and the 2nd win 7 os. only. your main win7 hard drive with the bootloader on will fail to boot to it's os i believe.

Terry, Sounds like fun. I'll dig the box out from under the desk and see what I can learn following your instructions. Question "go into your uefi bios and turn off "secure boot" or whatever it may be called" where? how? Thanks Dick

to enter bios you have to turn the pc on and immediately start tapping or hold down a certain key, usually the delete key but might be something else like the F2 key. when you start the pc as normal you usually get a quick message somewhere on the screen showing what keys need to be tapped to change things before the os starts to load and shows your "which os to boot" menu. it might say F12 for changing the boot order of drives, and del to enter setup (your bios.) be careful tho in the bios and don't change anything unless you know what it's for. after making your changes you usually press F10 to save your changes and exit bios where the pc will reboot again or press escape to exit bios without saving any changes you may have made. somewhere tho on the screen it should show what keys do what in the bios. i believe with a uefi bios you can now use the mouse to navigate around it where as before everything had to be done with keys on a keyboard, so this should make things a little easier for you to explore it. you should have a motherboard manual if you built the system yourself which will explain exactly how to get into your bios and what each setting is for, i highly suggest you find it and read it first if you have it because not all bios are the same so the secure boot option i'm thinking of will be called something different in the bios depending on maker of the motherboard/bios/oem.

Terry, Been there before and am comfortable playing. The uefi part is new so I'll do as instructed and dig out the manual [yes, I have it and I've scanned it before] It will be tonight before I get on my system again. I'll update things before bed Thanks Dick

Update Terry, Didn't find anything in the manual that mentions ufei or anything similar. Mboard is a couple of years old. Tried setting back to defaults for the BIOS but that wouldn't boot. Next idea? Thanks Dick

Next to the last question for the night; What are the possibilities that pulling the CMOS battery for a minute or so and then replacing it could have a positive effect? last question; where is the bootloader stored? Nite Dick

to be honest i'm a bit confused, it sounds like you don't have a uefi bios, but i thought win 8 needed one, might be just with drives bigger than 3TB tho, like i said have no real experience with win 7 and win 8,
win 7 uses ntfs file system and win 8 uses gpt, and it's only with gpt that you are able to use hard drive partitions bigger than 3tb in size.

the bootloader is always stored on the mbr of the hard drive, if you have more than one drive it is stored on the first hard drive.

win 8 will always overwrite the win 7 bootloader, so it's the win 8 cd you need to use to fix anything,

see if this helps you fix the boot problem. :- http://www.techspot.com/guides/630-windows-8-boot-fix/

particularly these commands

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /rebuildbcd

wonder if this would have something to do with why your win 7 os won't boot.

The disk corruption in Windows 7 could actually be attributed to the hybrid boot functionality in Windows 8 (ie. Windows 8 doesn't actually shutdown per se, it sort of does a hibernate thing, and it also leaves access to any drives it used open, hence why Windows 7 chucked a wobbly). If you are going to dual boot Windows 8 and any other OS, you will need to create a shortcut to force Windows 8 to do a proper shutdown.

Use the command "shutdown -s -t 0" (minus the quotes), and that will make windows 8 do a proper shutdown. After that, any other OS that uses the same drives will not complain about disk errors (unless you have a hardware error).

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums…99-503709e085d8




no i don't think pulling the battery will fix anything but it's worth a try.

have you tried booting each drive 1 at a time with the others disconnected yet, do any boot and to which os?