Need Urgent Help About Failed HDD

Well, I had a Windows XP SP3 installed in one of my HDD and Windows 7 on a different HDD on the same computer. The first HDD (XP) is pretty old, over 4 years so I out 7 on my other brand new HDD a month ago, after sometimes the old HDD started to fail to boot. However I left it there and transferred all my data from from previous one to the new one. Both were set as my Master drives and the old one was default.

I heard a lot clicking sounds and Seagate's Seatools showed me the old HDD is failing Short DST and Short generic test, though passed SMART. The boot loading order is set to show both OS for thirty seconds and 7 was set to default. However most of the times I couldnt get XP to work, but 7 worked fine.

Today when I started my computer, it showed me "BOOTMGR is corrupted. The system cannot boot". But on restart it worked fine. Also I got couple of Disk Read error on BIOS loading. But after 3-4 retries Windows 7 loaded and I couldnt find my old HDD anymore, not in Device manager or in Seatools. But I could hear it spinning. It is under warranty so I will get it replaced but since I had installed my XP there (and 7 on current disk, default) will I need to change the BCD/MBR? I am not sure why it showed BOOTMGR corrupted, then loaded fine. Could it be the failed HDD? I am not sure to use repair BCD/MBR using windows installation disk, as I never done that before, not to mention I am pretty novice about changing BIOS settings. Also will I need to change anything in BIOS as the HDD failed? The failed HDD was default boot device (F8 shows me) but both of them were Master.

Any help is appreciated.

 

subhrobhandari,

How did you transfer your data? Image/restore or just non OS data.

How did you install Win7? Was the WinXP HD present in the computer during the Win7 install? If so the Win7 booting files are in WinXP. Maybe that's why you can't boot Win7 at times with the BootMGR is Missing error.

 

I just cut-pasted my documents and some audio from my the old HDD to new one before it was failed. I didnt transfer any programs or etc. Yes, XP was installed before win7 but I cant figure why I am having BOOTMGR corrupt error sometimes, not always. When I am having that, if I continue to restart it works after 3-4 retries and windows completely successfully boots up, even no errors are shown in event log.

 

Try this and let us know the result. Disconnect your WinXP HD and then try and boot Win7.

 

If you installed windows 7 while having xp on a second hard drive Windows 7 will install the boot manager in the drive with XP and if you take it out, the computer shouldn't boot. Windows do this regardless of who is master and who is slave. Hmm I haven't played with windows 7 boot manager but maybe it's possible to take the boot manager from another working windows 7 pc and put there. Maybe someone here have done this experiment ^^.