Reinstalling OS to SATA drive with IDE drive installed

HaLo2FrEeEk

Posts: 164   +0
I've had this problem for years and always just unplugged the IDE drive before reinstalling. I'm tired of doing that though, and I want to fix it.

I finally got fed up at all the problems my computer has been having and decided to reinstall Windows 7. I have 3 SATA drives (2x 1TB and a 500 Gig) and a 200 Gig IDE drive. I install the OS to a partition of the 500 gig drive, but during the install, when it reboots after unpacking the files, it always tries to boot from the IDE drive, which gives me an error "BOOTMGR not found". Even if I go into the boot selection and choose the SATA drive, it gives me the message. If I installed the OS with the IDE drive plugged in, even unplugging that drive and rebooting gives me the error. I have to install Windows with the IDE drive unplugged.

I haven't looked at it a while, but I'm pretty sure the IDE drive is set to slave, not sure if that matters though since it's the only IDE drive.

Is there anything I can do about this? I'm tired of unplugging the drive to reinstall, it's just a pain.
 
You need to check that the jumpers on the IDE drive are set for slave and check in the Bios that the SATA drive with the OS is set as Primary Master.

I would also check under Integrated Perpherals in the Bios that your IDE set up shows the Serial-ATA controller is enabled.
 
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