unable to boot win7

[charliebrown]

Please be patient with me, this is my first post.

I am running win7, 64bit. My computer a dual core processor with 4gb ram, gigabyte motherboard, on pressing the start button it displayes the gigabyte logo for about 30 secs then the screen went black and a message saying unable to boot from hard drive (sata) appeared saying boot from CD/DVD. This has happened everytime i try to boot from HD. I have tried using another (sata) hard drive also (ata ide) connected HD with win xp OS but same message. The HD does not show in the BIOS?, i have tried using the recovery disc (win7) but get to the point when it says select OS to repair, but cannot do that as no OS shown.  Any help would be appreciated. If i am posting in the wrong board  then i apologize.

[patio]

Is this a laptop or desktop ? ?

[charliebrown]

Thank you for replying so quick, it is a desktop

[patio]

1st of all you can't simply swap another HDD with Windows in there and expect it to boot properly...this is by design.
Have you tried disconnecting and re-connecting the HDD at both the MBoard and the drive ? ?
Was there any issues leading up to this ?
While your in there doing the connections check to see who makes the HDD and DLoad and run the drive manuf. Free diagnostics...run the Long test.
You will need to make a bootable CD to do so...info is at the site.

If the HDD checks out OK there's a method to do a Repair Install with Win7 that retains all your apps and data...but let's get the drive checked out 1st...

Let us know.

[charliebrown]

Thank you for your help, it looks as if the problem has been solved (i hope). I rebuilt the computer from scratch and replaced the battery (which may have caused the problem). After resetting the CMOS/BIOS to default and running the repair disk it has booted up from the HD I have booted up from cold and it appears to be behaving itself.............Anyway thanks again for your help Patio

[patio]

Good News...

[charliebrown]

Sorry, still have problems - I have 2 sata HD installed and sometimes they are displayed in My computer and other times only one is displayed. I have done everything I can think of, changed hd, power and sata cables but still have this annoying start up problems.

[patio]

What is on the 2nd HDD ? ?

The HDD that has Win7 installed should be connected to SATA 0 or SATA 1 on the MBoard...the ports are labeled...
The other HDD should be SATA 2 or higher...

I suspect the 2nd drive also has Windows installed to it and the PC is trying to get it to boot...if it's from another PC it won't...and thats what i suspect the issue is.

[charliebrown]

Thanks again for your knowledge. The first HD 80GB  has W7 on it and ( is connected to the first SATA connection) when it boots up? this is the one it uses.  The second HD which also has W7 on it, (which disappears now and again) is 1TB. I did a check on both disks with the tool from the HD manufacturer, the first disk was fine, the second one a had bad sectors on it which were removed. Will just have to wait and see?

[patio]

Follow the above suggestions...
As i suspected you have 2 bootable HDD's...hence the issue...it's not the PC.

[charliebrown]

Patio,
Thanks again for your help, I need more of it as I have just booted up this morning after shutting down last night and it does not show the 2nd HD in My Computer. I here what you say but how do I remove the W7 operating system on the 2nd drive and just use it as a storage space etc. I was under the impression that you could put any windows system in a computer and provided it had the necessary hardware/software it would boot up. I am confused. How does the computer know which OS to boot from, I suppose from the boot sequence in the BIOS?