Windows doesnt boot after removing slave drive!

[gordon13]

I installed a new hard drive, and then installed windows to that new hard drive with the old one still connected and I now the two drives are somehow, linked so that if I remove the old drive, windows doesn't boot. When I reconnect the drive, windows boots up fine. I checked the boot priorities in the bios and its all as it should be.

I tried the windows repair disk, used the top option three times (as I've seen recommended on other forums), to no avail. I've tried the other options but the problem is, the windows installation is not detected, same with restore points, nothing works.

I think there's something to do with the Disk Management utility. I have the two disks, disk0 and disk1, disk1 is the disk I want to remove.

this is what the page looks like:

disk0 (boot, page file, crash dump, primary partition)
disk1 (system, active, primary partition) + (8mb unallocated)

It seems the System-(thing?) is on disk1 so when i remove the drive, the computer doesnt boot. Makes sense. What doesnt make sense is that windows ISNT installed on that disk so why the hell is "system" on there and causing trouble??

Would making the partition on disk0 active solve my problem? I dont want to click on anything and break it so I ask here.

Thanks

 

[Branden]

what version of windows? which one are you booting into?
you mention a slave disk, are both disks PATA on the same IDE cable?
more info!!

if both windows installations are XP (or earlier), i suspect the issue is the MBR is located on disk1 and when you remove disk1 you're removing the MBR.

 

[gordon13]

Sorry I forgot to say: Im running windows 7 home premium 64bit.
Actually Im not sure if Im using the right terms. Both hard drives are SATA so "slave" might not be accurate. What I mean by slave is a secondary drive that just hold data and no system files.

 

[gordon13]

Fixed it! All I had to do was "activate" the partition on my main drive, then shutdown, disconnect secondary drive, and boot off the Win 7 cd. click repair and it will prompt you saying theres a problem with the installation and it needs to perform a repair operation. Click OK or whatever, and let it do its thing. Note: the box where you OS/Drive should be displayed will be empty. reboot on the cd again and do the same thing, this time the OS will appear in the box and you will be able to perform a proper repair operation. restart the pc and it should work fine!