Mbr and Sata Controller Question

Sesheron

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 30, 2004
Messages
201
So I have two questions. First, some background info to provide details.
I run a two hard drive system. A 320GB hard drive for OS's and programs
and a 1TB hard drive for all Data. Somehow, Windows 7 has installed a boot loader to
each drive. I know this from Grub2 auto searching for bootloaders.

Now question 1) In the past couple of weeks, Windows 7 has frozen video
and visible input, the OS keeps running for a while (i can hear the movie
being played still) but as far as the eye can tell, all computing has stopped.
Eventually, I get a blue screen that gets rebooted before i can read any of it.
After said reboot, I get a Windows Boot manager has failed ( can't find its target OS).
I know this is the bootloader from the Data drive, as Grub is installed on the OS drive.
Upon further inspection, I notice that the OS drive isn't being detected by the Motherboard.
But whenever I boot from a LiveCD, I have no issue mounting the OS drive.
I'm fairly certain the drive isn't dying as chckdisk is not reporting any errors
it needed to fix. It's as if this freeze simply deleted my MBR. But that doesn't seem
quite right either, as even after I re-install Grub, the drive isn't detected at first.
After I change which ports the Sata cables are plugged into on the motherboard do
I easily boot into the OS of my choice. I, first went from ports Sata1 and Sata2 to
Sata3 and Sata6, and now I am back on the original Sata1 and Sata3. My knowledge
of computers is flaky when it comes to Sata controllers. Is there some kind of memory on the
Mobo that remembers what drive is where after a reboot, and my changing the plugs
forces it to re-search what drive is where?
To be fair, my sample size is rather small. This freeze, followed by the same
exact events, has only happened twice. But it feels like the Sata controller is going faulty.

Question 2 is my simply asking if I can somehow remove the Bootloader from the Data drive.
It is honestly annoying when I expect to see Grub and a windows bootloader has shown up.
 
1)
Disable automatic rebooting under startup and recovery options. Right click on my computer -> properties -> advanced settings->startup and recover (the choices might be called something slightly different, I don't have Windows here right now).

If you get another BSOD write down the exact message of the stop error. You might also want to run a utility from your HDD manufacturer to test the drive.

2)
All this will do is give you a different error message, and there is a possibility of doing something to mess up your boot sequence if you get something wrong, so I'd advise against spending time on this.
You have linux on the boot drive? It sounds like a partition on your secondary drive has been set as active in the MBR. Use fdisk in linux to toggle this flag. Make sure that you do this on the correct drive. That should give you the "replace disk and press any key...." or equivalent error instead. If that doesn't work I guess replacing the MBR of this drive with a standard MBR is the next step.
 
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The automatic restart option sounds about right for messing up my mbr, great find there.

I'm assuming that since I have disabled the auto restart...the next time I BSOD. I will be given enough time to read the error message.

And now that I think about. you are quite correct about leaving the extra bootloader alone.
 
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