Converting dual boot, to single boot...

Hans Manhave · March 28, 2015, 02:55:00 PM

How do I eliminate a drive?

Situation: mechanical drive, boots to WinVista or Linux if it is the only drive in the system. Vista failures caused me to put in a small SSD some time ago with Win7ultra. When the hardware boots, it sees two places: Win7 (SSD) and WinVista (rotational platters). Boots fine to Win7 on the SSD.

I want to remove the spinning device from the system. I added another SSD. Removed the spinning drive and now it has no boot place it says. While previously it was booting fine from the Win7 SSD it now doesn't want to do so.

How do I make it boot from the "old" SSD without reinstalling Win7, without having the spinning harddrive attached?

Mark · March 28, 2015, 10:31:24 PM

You might be able to boot from the win 7 disk and instead of install, click the repair link on the bottom left. There is an option to fix windows boot. I have no experience with this so YMMV. And depending on how win 7 partitioned the ssd, you might run into issues.

Personally, I think this is your best option though. An in place upgrade might also be an option, but I'd try the boot repair first.

Hans Manhave · March 28, 2015, 11:29:12 PM

So far the system has been restored to working as it was before I started.

Fortunately I made a couple system restore disks, a CD and a DVD, before attempting a reboot. "No boot MBR" is not a great message on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I downloaded EasyBCD 2.2, a free for home use program. It has interesting features. I don't know what it did or if it had any effect. I am working with a 64bit Win7Ultimate and I am not 100% sure that the free version handles that. It came up with a time out somewhere, after 30 minutes or more. I ended up rebooting and needing the system restore disk. I did what MS says to do. I had PDF'd their repair info and emailed it to myself so I could use that while attempting a restore. The manual method did something, but not completely. The automatic method did something, but not completely. I now have both the SSD and the rotational platters hooked up because it still cannot boot without the rotational drive although it only has Win7 in its MBR / boot list so I don't need to select. Both drive/partitions are/were 'active' during this experience. After a few reboots, it appears to be working as it was before the attempt. I will add the new SSD and see if the utilities surrounding that experience provide a solution. For example, there may be an option to make something bootable. No idea yet, there is are several utilities. It is also interesting that a USB3 PCIe host card needs a power connector like a floppy. They don't make those connectors anymore and I had no floppy power connector. Found an adapter in a surplus box at a computer store.

It has been an educational day.

Hans Manhave · March 29, 2015, 01:02:40 AM

I have no idea why, but it now works with the rotational disk out of the system. Don't ask me to repeat this event. Somehow the CMOS settings of the controller are also important, but in the end they are still what they were yesterday. How to stay busy most of the day.

Mark · March 30, 2015, 08:14:47 AM

Glad you got it resolved.

Jeff Zylstra · March 30, 2015, 10:07:19 AM

There are a few utilities that you can use to either ascertain what kind of volumes are on the disk, or "fix" a windows volume to make it bootable. GParted on a DVD is quite helpful for viewing what kind of volumes are on a disk, telling if they're master partitions or not and whether or not they're bootable. It is also infinitely helpful in resizing all volumes on a single disk to take from one volume and give to another.

Ultimate Boot Disk and others have multiple different utilities to make volumes bootable once again, and also read the status of the disk if you're afraid. I would say that Windows own recovery console is probably the safest version in that it only presents Windows options, and not those of other file systems, therefore its terminology will be more familiar and less prone to making an unrecoverable error.

All of the software I've mentioned is very capable and free to use. I like to support them when I can, because the commercial versions of these things that run on a server OS are several hundreds of dollars. I would recommend that anyone who works on computers have copies of these things on CD and/or DVD since you have to boot your computer from the CD/DVD in order for it to work. Download them now, when you don't need them.

Billy Welsh · March 30, 2015, 10:40:55 AM

I would add Ubuntu to that list as well.

While in this particular case it may not have helped, it saved me a lot of grief when AVG transformed my XP laptop into a paperweight. After Googling to identify the fix from other victims, I booted the machine using the Ubuntu DVD, fixed the broken file(s), and got everything back to the way it was. As soon as I did I dumped AVG, which to that point I had been very happy with.

This was the only way to fix outside of reinstalling the OS, which would have caused a lot of time over and above reinstalling XP. Could not get to Safe Mode or a previous system state.

Jeff Zylstra · March 30, 2015, 11:22:49 AM

Quote from: Billy Welsh on March 30, 2015, 10:40:55 AM
I would add Ubuntu to that list as well.

While in this particular case it may not have helped, it saved me a lot of grief when AVG transformed my XP laptop into a paperweight. After Googling to identify the fix from other victims, I booted the machine using the Ubuntu DVD, fixed the broken file(s), and got everything back to the way it was. As soon as I did I dumped AVG, which to that point I had been very happy with.

This was the only way to fix outside of reinstalling the OS, which would have caused a lot of time over and above reinstalling XP. Could not get to Safe Mode or a previous system state.

As mad as you were at AVG, I will say that just about any anti-virus is going to let you down from time to time, simply because of the "blacklist" approach that it takes. If it is on the "blacklist", then the software doesn't let it run. If it's not, then it's all good and it can probably run. There are any number of zero day exploits that can sadly get through almost any anti-virus program.

I've often wondered if running MalwareByte's "professional" version was worthwhile or not. Supposedly it is designed to run along side of other AV software. Not sure what that would do to speed, but when you've been hacked, you seriously consider these things.

Hans Manhave · March 30, 2015, 11:27:11 AM

I had been wondering about the drive controller modes and just found this:
http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c02961221

There are probably "better" explanations, but I didn't know what AHCI mode was while my controller was in RAID mode. Putting it in AHCI mode caused it not to start. Somewhere it said in the install instructions with the drive that it should be in AHCI mode. The info at the provided link explains that RAID includes AHCI so I can leave it the way it was. I'm not using a RAID setup but now I now that the coloring of the six or eight controller ports on the mobo are colored for a reason and not to make the mobo look pretty. Hopefully good for another couple years.

Hans Manhave · March 30, 2015, 11:32:11 AM

I have run the MalwareBytes professional version. It was very successful. But it also BSOD'd my office XP machine every now and then. Disabling that after rebooting my workstation gave me a more stable system. I did run it every now and then, including updates. I only received a BSOD on that system when MB was loaded. I used windows task manager to kill the tasks. Not sure if it was the MBupdater. Was just easier to disable and continue. Very useful prog though.

Billy Welsh · March 30, 2015, 11:36:29 AM

I should have been more clear - it was not malware/virus that created the paperweight, but an AVG update. Not just a definition update - I was prompted for an update to the program itself. Downloaded and installed, and got a paperweight.

I was so relieved when I got it fixed, I never followed up with AVG - figured other victims were already doing that. I speculated at the time that the upgrade was NOT designed for XP machines given it's pending or possibly in effect end-of-life. But if that were the case it should have avoided prompting me or warned me that my system was incompatible with the upgrade or better yet BOTH.

I did not save the info I found about the AVG issue - it identified the problem centered on the hpdskflt.sys file. I used the Ubuntu boot disk to recover this file. I don't recall if I had to simply rename it or recover it from a restore point (more likely).

Quote from: Jeff Zylstra on March 30, 2015, 11:22:49 AM
Quote from: Billy Welsh on March 30, 2015, 10:40:55 AM
I would add Ubuntu to that list as well.

While in this particular case it may not have helped, it saved me a lot of grief when AVG transformed my XP laptop into a paperweight. After Googling to identify the fix from other victims, I booted the machine using the Ubuntu DVD, fixed the broken file(s), and got everything back to the way it was. As soon as I did I dumped AVG, which to that point I had been very happy with.

This was the only way to fix outside of reinstalling the OS, which would have caused a lot of time over and above reinstalling XP. Could not get to Safe Mode or a previous system state.

As mad as you were at AVG, I will say that just about any anti-virus is going to let you down from time to time, simply because of the "blacklist" approach that it takes. If it is on the "blacklist", then the software doesn't let it run. If it's not, then it's all good and it can probably run. There are any number of zero day exploits that can sadly get through almost any anti-virus program.

I've often wondered if running MalwareByte's "professional" version was worthwhile or not. Supposedly it is designed to run along side of other AV software. Not sure what that would do to speed, but when you've been hacked, you seriously consider these things.

Bob · March 30, 2015, 11:40:18 AM

Off topic but since talking dual Boot. Windows 10 is going to prevent dual boot. As with anything sure be some work around but they are going to try and prevent dual boot environments.

Jeff Zylstra · March 30, 2015, 11:54:04 AM

Quote from: Bob on March 30, 2015, 11:40:18 AM
Off topic but since talking dual Boot. Windows 10 is going to prevent dual boot. As with anything sure be some work around but they are going to try and prevent dual boot environments.

So did their anti-anti-monopoly lawyers get bored or something? I would think that booting into a virtual machine or something, and then installing Windows 10 would get around this. You're right, someone will hack it and the rest of us will suffer with onerous restrictions that make our life even harder and their products even more disliked.

Mark · March 30, 2015, 01:41:19 PM

Quote from: Bob on March 30, 2015, 11:40:18 AM
Off topic but since talking dual Boot. Windows 10 is going to prevent dual boot. As with anything sure be some work around but they are going to try and prevent dual boot environments.

Just use VMware Workstation. Pretty slick application, and as long as you have enough RAM, probably even better than dual-booting (depending on purpose/application of course). You can even drag and drop files between the local and virtual machine.