[Solved] Working win7 SSD won't boot after using same rig to update another SSD to win10

A2theB2theB

Commendable
Aug 25, 2016
7
0
1,520
The two SSD's in question have never been installed in the system at the same time. No other hardware changes have been made.

I had a working win7 install on a 250gb SSD and a Win7 disk good for multiple installs. Decided rather than update it to win10 (heavily modded Skyrim I don't want to break/lose), I would buy a brand new 256gb SSD, install win7 on that, do the free upgrade before it expired, then turn around and do a clean install of 10.

Everything went fine, the new 256gb is running a fresh copy of win10 like a champ.

I take the 256gb out, put the original 250gb back in, same SATA port and all. Go to BIOS and make sure it is listed at boot 1, systems restarts, BIOS screen, then nothing. Blank screen, nothing on the cases drive activity LED.

Throw the 256gb back in and everything boots fine.

If I plug the 250gb in as an external drive I can see all the files are there, BIOS always sees it as a working drive as well.

I did not update the BIOS at any point since the win7 system was working. 95% sure I did not make any changes to the MB's SB SATA settings, but have tried every listed option and same result every time, the 250gb won't boot.

Not hardcore but I've built every system myself for 15 years, never run up against an issue I couldn't solve with Google and firm resolve. Created my profile just to post this.

Can something in the MB's memory been changed by the new SSD and it's OS installs? What am I missing here?
 
Solution
After ruling out anything BIOS related, I put in my Win7 install disc, selected Repair, then Start Up Repair, it found an issue, I let it automatically repair it and after a reboot the drive was working again.

Thanks to all for the suggestions.

A2theB2theB

Commendable
Aug 25, 2016
7
0
1,520
After ruling out anything BIOS related, I put in my Win7 install disc, selected Repair, then Start Up Repair, it found an issue, I let it automatically repair it and after a reboot the drive was working again.

Thanks to all for the suggestions.
 
Solution