Fixing W7 System Partition post Multibeast

[BarkingGhostar]

Last October when I experimented with Hackintosh, I followed the installation process quite successfully and installed Mountain Lion onto a Samsung SSD. I had kept this segregated from my Windows 7 Professional installation which resided on a separate Samsung SSD of its own.

Unfortunately, during a second Multibeast run I forgot I still had the W7pro SSD connected and as a result the Chimera bootloader edited/altered something on the Windows 7 SSD's System Partition that is preventing me from booting W7 without the Hackintosh SSD being connected.

I know I can use the W7pro media to boot into a Recovery Environment to resolve this, but I was wondering if anyone here has done this. I am not entirely sure what got changed by the Chimera bootloader. Any enlightenment is always appreciated.

BTW, I did post this over on the forums that I learned to build a Hackintosh, but very little traffic on my post with no replies had me consider asking outside the[ir forum] box.

 

[Dahak]

Generally there is 2 things that is needed. Now mind you its been a bit since I messed around with the win7 boot info and most of this is off the top of my head.

1) the partition that contains the windows 7 boot files must be active. This could be the separate 100mb partition or the main partition that windows is installed on

2) generally there is a boot folder with the bcd database which is how win 7 boots.

now from the recovery environment there are ways to rebuild with bootrec

This MS KB may help as well
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Previously, I tried booting the SSD with W7 on it post Multibeast run which installed W7 under the Chimera bootloader. That wouldn't work. So in an experiment this morning I downloaded and installed Macrium Reflect and clones the W7 SSD to an old 500GB HDD.

My intentions was to test the Windows RE on it first, but I got an error message trying to get into it:

This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of Windows.

OK, I was using the same exact DVD disc I installed from originally.

Ok, so I exited out and naturally the system tried to reboot, asking me twice to hit any key to boot from a CD or DVD-ROM, which I ignored. Guess what happened? The HDD booted into a perfectly cloned W7pro environment.

So while I made no legitimate alterations using the W7pro DVD-ROM (never got into the RE), somehow this HDD is bootable.

 

[Dahak]

Huh. that is bizarre.

Usually I've see the "not compatible" error usually after it detects windows and you are using 32bit media on a 64-bit os or the opposite.

Only thing I can think of is if somehow Macrium Relect repaired the boot info during the clone but it would usually say something(not sure never used it)

If you put both ssd's back in and use the motherboard boot menu, can you boot Win7?
if so it seems like like it repair itself either from Macrium or the initial boot of WinRE(which it usually should tell you)

 

[ArisVer]

How about cloning your "new" disk to your old disk?

 

[BarkingGhostar]

OK, I'm embarrassed. Now I do not think the Chimera bootloader did anything. I do not know why I hadn't tried this before, but I swapped the SATA ports between the SSDs and the W7pro booted just fine.

I'm concluding that the UEFI environment knows what 'port' was last booted from and boots from it the next time. When that port contains Chimera, the bootloader inspects all other connected devices and offers them up as boot options.

Silly, and I feel silly for not trying this before. I previously only disconnected the Hackintosh SSD and left the W7pro SSD connected to its original SATA port. So, this turned out to be a non-problem.

Still, strange regarding the error message. But that is M$ for you.