lost access to w7 drives

it sounds like you don't have a uefi bios, but i thought win 8 needed one

I have W8/XP duel boot (previously W8/W7) installed on my 2008 work laptop Terry, which has no uefi.

Interesting thread, which is sounding more and more like a corrupted or incorrectly installed boot loader.
Has Easy BCD been used when installing/uninstalling an OS?

Great care is needed when moving the boot loader around using copy and paste or even Easy BCD, especially with three OSs involved.
It is not uncommon to have one (or more) drives not recognized using either method. I have just removed XP from my duel boot W7/XP desktop. I could have easily ended up with W7 no longer recognized or accessible if moving the bootloader was incorrectly done and then deleted XP.

In this case the bootloader should be on W8 where it will recognize both W7s, if edited correctly with Easy BCD (If it was on either W7s without BCD edit, it wouldn't recognize W8).

Terry; I'll try the bootrec / steps this evening have not pulled box to do the one-drive-at-a-time routine. Just lazy last night and didn't work much. Did take wife out to eat which was a nice change for both of us Lee; EasyBCD has been installed since before w8 was installed. It's used on all three of the bootable drives. Other than updating it I haven't been in there to play [much] nothing lately W8 history initially installed as the public beta. took advantage of the low cost upgrade offer and purchased a 3-pc copy [upgrade from vista or w7 only] Did the upgrade and have been using it without error until this thread started. Thanks Dick

Terry; typed 'bootrec' from the command prompt on the w8 drive and got the response 'unrecognized command' tried the same thing on the primary [w7] with the same response Lee; to clarify the drive was formatted then I installed w7 on the drive then used the new disk to upgrade it to w8

Ok, so the bootloader is on W8 on one HDD so far and then what did you do?

Lee, Since the installation, some months ago I've been using that as a test drive to get acquainted with w8 while doing the bulk of my email and other tasks on the w7 primary drive. I use the third drive to research and respond to questions about Norton 360. Dick

Ok Dick, sorry for not reading the the whole thread before commenting.
Didn't realize things were fine for some time before your current problem. Not an OS installation problem then

Not an OS installation problem - agreed running full scans with MBAM on all three drives now will report on results when I get home NIS scan of the drives reported back with no threats It's almost getting to be a fun hunt for the problem - just a giant pita because all of my 'stuff' is on that main drive and I do need to get several things done Thanks Dick

It's almost getting to be a fun hunt for the problem - just a giant pita because all of my 'stuff' is on that main drive and I do need to get several things done

I hope you have at least backed-up all your stuff Dick, as it will be no fun at all if things go really pear-shaped (?)
Even if you can't access the drive normally, you can copy it all to a USB drive/DVDs with Puppy Linux or similar.

Lee, I have more than one full backup on an external drive that I can work from to get things back in order when I get access to the drive You asked for the stop info STOP: 0X0000007B (0XFFFFF880009A9928, 0XFFFFFFFFC0000034, 0X0000000000000000, 0X0000000000000000) The results of running full scans with SAS and MBAM were 2 Trojans removed from the "F:" drive Still no access but I haven't tried to do any repairs yet either I have a copy of the BCD file if it will help any - it's in the last full backup done 4/21/2013 Thanks Dick

The STOP 0x7B error just means a BSOD has happened (usually driver or Malware damage).
If Windows is able to start after the STOP 0x7B error, you would be prompted with a Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown message that shows:

Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
BCCode: 7b

You might be able to extract some joy from this thread.
STOP: 0X0000007B 0XFFFFF880009A9928 0XFFFFFFFFC0000034

Lee, Thanks. I'll read through that and see if I find anything that applies and apply it. Dick

The results of running full scans with SAS and MBAM were 2 Trojans removed from the "F:" drive

must admit don't like the sound of that, maybe needs you to pop into our malware forum and make sure your pc is clean of all malware first before we can fix your boot problem, after all it might be malware related. shrugs.

typed 'bootrec' from the command prompt on the w8 drive and got the response 'unrecognized command'
tried the same thing on the primary [w7] with the same response

sorry absolutely no idea why the command was unrecognised, did you put in the whole command "bootrec /fixmbr" without the quotes. (i assume your talking about the command prompt from the cd's and not the drives seeing how you can't boot into the win 7 os?)

here's another link that may help you fix you boot problems if nothing in the older link works.:- http://www.tweakhound.com/2012/11/13/how-t…ows-bootloader/

if you still can't get it fixed then i'm afraid the only thing i can think of doing next is to work on each drive singularly, even doing repair installs (thus keeping all your data.) on each if that's what it takes until they boot to the os on it, then connecting all 3 once more and then add the other 2 os to the bootloader.

Terry, Might have to try the malware forum as well. Just not sure how much can be done until I can access the drive directly. Still able to get to them via the command line mode. Not sure about the command line from the CD on the bootrec set. I've been collecting a number of other tasks to be completed that I am going to have to sort things out a bit better. I still have work to do that I am trying to get done on the w8 drive when all of the details and helps are on the primary w7. I'd say frustrating but that's only about half of it. The drive at a time repair is on the list but I've been holding off trying not to have to dig the box out from under the desk and getting things spread out all over the desk, that is filled with work and another computer that had been configured for a pastor to use. [almost hijacked it to use as a test machine] Thanks Dick

use the win 8 install cd and command line to try and fix the bootloader and not the os on any drives. just pull it from under the desk take the side off and leave everything in there, all you need to do is remove the sata cables from the drives, leaving them connected on the motherboard side. no need to pull power cables or anything else, then connect just one sata cable to a drive, work on it until it boots then pull the sata cable connect it to next drive and repeat for all 3. another thing you can try now (before opening case side.) to get at least the 2nd win 7 os to boot and that is to change the boot order of the drives on start up, usually by tapping some key like F12 and then choosing a different drive to boot each time, with luck when the 2nd win 7 os is chosen as first boot drive it will boot right up.

I'll see what I can do about changing the boot order. They all list when it says loading operating system and I just arrow down to the one I want. The default is the w7 primary. EasyBCD is also loaded - may try using that to change the default boot drive did the bootrec / commands on the "F:" drive - that's the one identified as W7 Main fixmbr - successful fixboot - successful scanos - total identified windows installations 0 [zero] - successful rebuildbcd - same as above looks like time to go for the one drive at a time and play with it until I get it to boot may be a long night - glad it's Friday Thanks Dick