PC meltdown

[BlueStar]

Right, so I've been putting off installing my new hard drive for a while after my old one started reporting it was about to die, but it looks like it's made the decision for me. Went onto a site of ill repute for a film for the missus and my anti-virus went apeshit, blocking loads of programmes and Win7 admin alerts kept asking me if I wanted to allow 20 odd programmes to make changes to the machine in a loop.  Shut down, restarted and it gets up to just after 'starting windows', I get a black screen with a mouse pointer and it reboots.  Windows repair thing doesn't work, so it's new HDD time.

 

Problem is, when I boot from the Win 7 DVD it doesn't see my new drive, just my old secondary one.  I've never had a SATA drive on this PC, just IDE.  I can see it from the BIOS in certain menus, like boot priority, but what do I need to do to be able to install Win7 on it and boot from it?  The new hdd is the one starting with WD.

 

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/8862/img1965ng.th.jpghttp://img196.imageshack.us/img196/4733/img1966v.th.jpghttp://img210.imageshack.us/img210/1843/img1967s.th.jpg

 

[BlueStar]

Right, plugged it into the other SATA port and now I can get a load of RAID options up on boot that I don't understand

 

Do I need drivers or something?  I have the option to load drivers in the windows install bit but I've never needed drivers for hard drives before and I've no idea where I'd get them.

[Guest Lazlo]

What's the model no. of your motherboard and hard drive.

 

Sounds like a win7 problem, you might need a driver but it's unusual.

 

If that was the case your mobo manufacturer will have the drivers, you'd have to put them onto a usb stick or floppy.

 

I've had this so many times but it never seems to be the same thing twice, it's infuriating i know.

 

Formatting you old drive and working from there might be a solution

[BlueStar]

Cheers - Not sure what I've done, but I tried it for about the 5th time and suddenly I had the option to install to the SATA drive. Strangely I now can't see my secondary IDE in windows now but it's a start!

[BlueStar]

Right, I get it.  It's basically my BIOS having an eppy fit when I don't have a primary IDE drive.  I've had to take the jumpers off my old drive and make my old IDE secondry drive the primary.  If I boot like that I get the option between booting to Windows 7 (The install on my new SATA drive) and Windows 7 (Recovered) - which is actually just my data drive with no install on it, where it tried to 'fix' it because it thought I should be booting off it.  If I have just my SATA drive installed I can't boot normally because it moans about not having a primary IDE, so I have to hold F8 to access the boot menu.  Once in the SATA install I can't see my old data drive, presumably because it's the primary IDE.  Managed to copy all my files over through a pendrive linux install mind.