Confused about reformat Win7, strange results

I did a reformat of my Win7 Home Premium 64 bit machine. I first set the CD/DVD player as first boot device, and the install went well. So far as I know. When I went to reset the HD as the first boot, I noticed that both my hard drives had the same ID number. I had asked the install to format Drive 0, or C drive, which is the one it chose. Now, whenever I boot
up, I get a page that looks like the one you get when an improper shut down happens, but this one is requiring me to select one of two Windows 7, or select other tools with the Tab button. I did something wrong, no doubt. When I go to Computer Management, C drive, Disk 0 is "healthy, boot, page file, crash, dump, primary". Disk 1, D drive, says "Healthy,primary partition." It has files on it that shouldn't be there, it has a whole Windows system file and a lot of other stuff.

Help me, o gurus, this is a new quagmire for me.

Thanks

You should have deleted the partition/s when attempting to install Windows 7. Now you have to start over. Deleting partition/s, gets rid of the partition that your software is installed on and stops these problems of having two OSes.

See if this helps:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...ws-7#section_7

Tell me there's another way, please! I've spent six, seven hours here installing my old programs. Can't I just reformat the secondary drive? Delete the files? Oh s...t!

If I had a broken install, I wouldn't have installed all my program on it first.

You might try this little program, it might remove the other entry but I think it only removes it from the bootmanager and not the harddrive itself.

EasyBCD

When installing Windows, I usually make sure that only one hard drive is connected. That way the gurus at Microsoft don't get confused about which drive you want Windows installed on.

If you have done a parallel install of Windows, bite the bullet and start over. Although it is a royal pain, it is going to be a lot less painful than trying to deal with the mess that you get from a parallel install, believe me.

Okay, I'll bite the bullet. And I'll disconnect that second drive. I did all kinds of homework,
read the material, watched a video tutorial, and the issue was never covered....or I was
in outer space at the time.

thanks, and once more into the fray...

I've disconnected one of the HDs and reinstalled Win 7. What happens when I connect the other HD? I tried to reformat it but it gave me ominous warnings because it had an OS on it.
So I went ahead and installed the OS on the available drive. When I plug in the second drive
will it see that and try to boot? or should I connect it and reformat it now that I have a safe OS installed?

thanks

It will just pick it up as a added drive. And no, if it not listed in the BIOS as primary drive, the computer will not try to boot to it.

Some BIOSes may change the order of the drives when you connect a new one, and that may affect the drive that the BIOS is set to boot from. Are both the drives the same make, model and size? If not, you can go into the BIOS setup after reconnecting the second drive during the first boot and see which drive the BIOS is set to boot from. If it is not the correct one, change it and continue booting.

I should report that my secondary disk, noted as Disk 0, has split itself into a partition of 100mb as System Rserved, and an F partition noted as Healthy, Primary. Can I reformat this disk now? My Disk 1 is my boot disk C, apparently. It's a little confusing.

thanks

The "System Reserved" partition is where Windows 7 installs the boot files. I think the best thing to do here would be to post a screenshot of your Disk Management, or there will be confusion and you may end up reinstalling a third time!

Can you see this shot?

bigger screen shot?

I'm utterly mystified as to how that happened if you had one of the drives disconnected :confused:

Which drive did you want to install Windows on - Drive 0 or Drive 1? Because I don't like the situation that you have there, currently you are dependent on both drives being present and correct before you can boot into Windows :(

I can disconnect the partitioned drive and can boot with one drive, the one designated as C, now drive 0.. They're identical drives, so it's hard to tell them apart. I think that I reformatted to the secondary drive. Would you suggest I start over, install to the other drive?

I can boot from the C drive with the other disconnected. Everything works except Zone Alarm's antivirus is unable to kick in. I think I'll start fresh, install
the drive that was probably my boot drive to begin with.

I think that sounds like a good plan. Disconnect the other drive, then when you reinstall, make sure you delete both the Windows partition and the System reserved partition. Setup will create a new System Reserved partition and all should be good :)

Yes, I reformatted the "other" drive. Everything works fine. EXCEPT. The C drive has a bunch of files that shouldn't be there. They weren't formatted away. I'm online, I'm installing programs, etc. etc. I'll give you screen shots. At this point, I'm either going to leave it alone or go buy a couple fresh hard drives and install as to a new machine. Either that or format the C drive and start again. Man, I've reinstalled XP systems at least five times, and never had this kind of craziness.

thanks

Rather than buy a couple of fresh hard drives why not run Kill Disk on the two you have--it returns them to new condition.

http://www.killdisk.com/

I finally got this under control by clicking the format option on the corrupted drive, installed for (should have counted) maybe the twelfth time in a day. Now it looks clean and I can breathe and eat again.

Thanks for the help.

You're very welcome, I'm glad you got there in the end :D

It is all good experience, you'll find that you can install Windows and get it set up how you like it in no time in the future :)