Out of ideas on fixing boot issues

[twentw]

For unknown reasons, my RAID0 array stopped booting, and nothing I could do could get it going again. I took the drives out, did chkdisk, reformatted, rebuilt the array, made sure it was recognized in the bios, but Windows 7 install doesn't see it.

So, I took those drives out and put in a single SATA drive - but Windows install doesn't see it or (sometimes) it sees it but says it can't install Windows on it. Here's where it gets strange. So, I put in an old PATA drive, and suddenly Windows can now see and install Windows on the SATA drive. So that's what I do. So now I've got Windows on the SATA, but it won't boot unless the PATA drive is connected to the computer!

I figure this is some boot record issue. So I go into Repair on the Windows installation disk, and it indicates "the partition table does not have a valid system partition" and attempts repair. But that does not fix the problem. I go into command prompt and run "bootsect /nt60 c: /mbr", but that doesn't work either.

So, anyone here have any ideas on what I should try next?

 

[denis280]

OK Lets start by giving us more info. MOBO.HDD.RAMS.PSU.and processor

 

[twentw]

OK Lets start by giving us more info. MOBO.HDD.RAMS.PSU.and processor

Thanks for your reply. My issues have shifted a bit. I was finally able to get Windows installed. As it turned out, the drive was formatted as dynamic, so I put it into another computer, changed it to basic and that did the trick. Windows install really needs to handle this situation better.

But I still was never able to re-install Windows on my Raid array. Most of the time, it didn't even see the array (yes, it's properly configured and setup in the bios). The two times it saw the array and started to install, but eventually gave me an error saying it could not find the files needed to complete the install. Attempting to install the Raid drivers before install made no difference.

Anyway, I'm content with setting up the Raid drives as storage at this point, so no need to respond. It'll just be one of those unsolved mysteries.