Looking for help on Win 7 boot disk

[Ken]

I have a bootable CD disk, that was made on an HP laptop with Win 7-64
installed. This boot disk will boot up in the DVD drive of the
computer, but indicates an error (0x0000007b Error) when used on the
laptop that created it. It refuses to see or recognize the hard drives
that are attached to the laptop. (They are SATA) I might also state
that the computer boots perfectly to the installed hard drive if the CD
is removed.

This same CD however works perfectly on another computer that is a 32
bit computer and has Windows XP installed. In fact, it will recognize
the same hard drive it refused to see on the laptop if attached to the
32 bit computer.

My bios does not have a setting for the HD controller type, as some seem
to believe that setting the controller to IDE rather that SATA solves
this problem.

My questions are these: Is this a case of the wrong driver being listed
on the boot CD? Or is this a case of the bios not being able to be set
properly for the CD? Or is there something special about 64 bit
computers that needs special software for such a boot disk?

 

[charlie]

I have a bootable CD disk, that was made on an HP laptop with Win 7-64
installed. This boot disk will boot up in the DVD drive of the
computer, but indicates an error (0x0000007b Error) when used on the
laptop that created it. It refuses to see or recognize the hard drives
that are attached to the laptop. (They are SATA) I might also state
that the computer boots perfectly to the installed hard drive if the CD
is removed.

This same CD however works perfectly on another computer that is a 32
bit computer and has Windows XP installed. In fact, it will recognize
the same hard drive it refused to see on the laptop if attached to the
32 bit computer.

My bios does not have a setting for the HD controller type, as some seem
to believe that setting the controller to IDE rather that SATA solves
this problem.

My questions are these: Is this a case of the wrong driver being listed
on the boot CD? Or is this a case of the bios not being able to be set
properly for the CD? Or is there something special about 64 bit
computers that needs special software for such a boot disk?

I'd suggest that the first step might be to look for a BIOS update for
the laptop.
Next, look at this thread.
https://social.technet.microsoft.co.../thread/19c703a4-f52a-4b90-8a8c-fd80cbaf9c7a/

I have an older desktop that this occurred with.
Turned out that the older BIOS versions were picky about which SATA
ports were used for the DVD/CD boot device, and the first HD.
Somewhere along the four or five BIOS revs, the problem went away.

 

[Paul]

I have a bootable CD disk, that was made on an HP laptop with Win 7-64
installed. This boot disk will boot up in the DVD drive of the
computer, but indicates an error (0x0000007b Error) when used on the
laptop that created it. It refuses to see or recognize the hard drives
that are attached to the laptop. (They are SATA) I might also state
that the computer boots perfectly to the installed hard drive if the CD
is removed.

This same CD however works perfectly on another computer that is a 32
bit computer and has Windows XP installed. In fact, it will recognize
the same hard drive it refused to see on the laptop if attached to the
32 bit computer.

My bios does not have a setting for the HD controller type, as some seem
to believe that setting the controller to IDE rather that SATA solves
this problem.

My questions are these: Is this a case of the wrong driver being listed
on the boot CD? Or is this a case of the bios not being able to be set
properly for the CD? Or is there something special about 64 bit
computers that needs special software for such a boot disk?

What is on this "bootable CD" ? Is it the Windows 7 recovery CD, the
one that is supposed to boot to the recovery console ? A recovery CD
has around 200MB of content, while an installer DVD could have 2 or 3GB.
That's one way to tell the difference.

At least when booting from the hard drive, the first boot of a
freshly installed OS, tries all the drivers, such as IDE, AHCI,
or RAID. When Windows 7 gets a match on the driver, and the driver
is installed in early boot, the registry is updated with the information.
Subsequent boots from the hard drive go faster, because then, only
the driver that worked is tested. Then, in cases where you switch
the BIOS setting for the port to something else, you should only
do that, after doing a "registry re-arming" procedure. That
enables all the relevant drivers you want the OS to test on the next
startup. Once the OS gets a match on the driver, after the re-arming,
it will again have memorized the one that worked.

(Some info on re-arming, but there are perhaps four entries total, of interest)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

A boot CD, on the other hand, should not be doing that. It should
be testing all the drivers it has, just like a fresh OS would. The
registry on that CD, should not have any pre-boiled bits set, saying
only one driver is relevant. Even the older installer media, you
could see one driver after another being loaded (like, RAID drivers
and such). That was a major portion of the boot time.

On Windows 8, I've also heard of boot failure cases, involving
legacy BIOS versus UEFI (on some computers, you can change the
BIOS type at startup). Apparently there are Windows 8 boot discs
that lack both bootup types. Whereas, the preview versions of Windows 8
discs, were properly set up. And there is yet another BIOS setting,
which seems to allow bypassing the issue. (It would not have been
necessary, if the release DVD had been built properly. Or so it is
believed.)

Paul

 

[Ken]

I'd suggest that the first step might be to look for a BIOS update for
the laptop.

Thanks for the reply. I currently have the latest bios version
installed, and since that was made a couple of years ago, I doubt that
HP will be updating it.

Next, look at this thread.
https://social.technet.microsoft.co.../thread/19c703a4-f52a-4b90-8a8c-fd80cbaf9c7a/


I have an older desktop that this occurred with.
Turned out that the older BIOS versions were picky about which SATA
ports were used for the DVD/CD boot device, and the first HD.
Somewhere along the four or five BIOS revs, the problem went away.

A little more on the boot CD: It is created in the GUI of Windows 7,
and it seeks the drivers that are present in the GUI. An ISO file is
created, and that file is used to make the boot CD. The thing that
puzzles me is that the boot CD works flawlessly on a 32 bit computer.
In fact it sees the same hard drives it refused to recognize on the 64
bit computer. One would think if it were a driver problem, that it
would also fail on the other computer. This fact also seems to indicate
there is nothing wrong with the structure of the hard drives.

To take the subject further, I created another boot CD disk on a
different computer (Compaq) that also had Windows 7 installed. That CD
disk also exhibited the same failure. It too refused to see the hard
drive installed even though it would boot to the HD if the boot CD was
removed. I did this because I was wondering if it had something to do
with Win 7-64. I guess I could look for someone with a computer that
had Win 7-32 to see what happens?

I can live with the problem, it is just that I hate when such a problem
exists and I don't know why.

 

[Ken]

What is on this "bootable CD" ? Is it the Windows 7 recovery CD, the
one that is supposed to boot to the recovery console ? A recovery CD
has around 200MB of content, while an installer DVD could have 2 or 3GB.
That's one way to tell the difference.

Thanks for your reply. The boot CD contains a disk management program
that can be run within Windows GUI or from the boot CD. The advantage
to the boot CD is that if Windows won't boot due to corruption, you can
overcome this via the CD. The CD contains about 200 MB of data at most,
so a DVD is not needed.

At least when booting from the hard drive, the first boot of a
freshly installed OS, tries all the drivers, such as IDE, AHCI,
or RAID. When Windows 7 gets a match on the driver, and the driver
is installed in early boot, the registry is updated with the information.
Subsequent boots from the hard drive go faster, because then, only
the driver that worked is tested. Then, in cases where you switch
the BIOS setting for the port to something else, you should only
do that, after doing a "registry re-arming" procedure. That
enables all the relevant drivers you want the OS to test on the next
startup. Once the OS gets a match on the driver, after the re-arming,
it will again have memorized the one that worked.

(Some info on re-arming, but there are perhaps four entries total, of
interest)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

A boot CD, on the other hand, should not be doing that. It should
be testing all the drivers it has, just like a fresh OS would. The
registry on that CD, should not have any pre-boiled bits set, saying
only one driver is relevant. Even the older installer media, you
could see one driver after another being loaded (like, RAID drivers
and such). That was a major portion of the boot time.

Interesting explanation of what takes place.

On Windows 8, I've also heard of boot failure cases, involving
legacy BIOS versus UEFI (on some computers, you can change the
BIOS type at startup). Apparently there are Windows 8 boot discs
that lack both bootup types. Whereas, the preview versions of Windows 8
discs, were properly set up. And there is yet another BIOS setting,
which seems to allow bypassing the issue. (It would not have been
necessary, if the release DVD had been built properly. Or so it is
believed.)

Paul

See my comments to Charlie for more details.

 

[charlie]

Thanks for your reply. The boot CD contains a disk management program
that can be run within Windows GUI or from the boot CD. The advantage
to the boot CD is that if Windows won't boot due to corruption, you can
overcome this via the CD. The CD contains about 200 MB of data at most,
so a DVD is not needed.

Interesting explanation of what takes place.


See my comments to Charlie for more details.

I cannot help but wonder if the problem
is related to the OEM version preinstalled on the laptop.
OEMs have been known to do some strange things to "customize"
the preinstalled versions.

One of my older HP Vista laptops, US version, circa 2007-8, is such a
system.
(I replaced the OEM version with a promo copy of Vista ultimate)
Anyway, the original vista OEM install used a popular
disk utility to generate the one and only backup copy.
HP deliberately used a Canadian French version of the utility in order
to prevent users from taking advantage of the utilities command line
features. That and a bunch of HP installed "garbage ware" inspired the
change.

Another gotcha that may be a player is that there are usually both
Microsoft SATA drivers, and OEM chipset SATA drivers.
If I'm setting up a SSD system drive as a boot drive, and transferring
the contents of the C: drive to it, The SSD transfer utility may not
work properly with the OEM chipset drivers.

 

[Ken]

I cannot help but wonder if the problem
is related to the OEM version preinstalled on the laptop.
OEMs have been known to do some strange things to "customize"
the preinstalled versions.

You know, this sounds very likely. It hadn't crossed my mind, but the
makers often pay a price for the OEM versions they install.

 

[Paul]

I cannot help but wonder if the problem
is related to the OEM version preinstalled on the laptop.
OEMs have been known to do some strange things to "customize"
the preinstalled versions.

One of my older HP Vista laptops, US version, circa 2007-8, is such a
system.
(I replaced the OEM version with a promo copy of Vista ultimate)
Anyway, the original vista OEM install used a popular
disk utility to generate the one and only backup copy.
HP deliberately used a Canadian French version of the utility in order
to prevent users from taking advantage of the utilities command line
features. That and a bunch of HP installed "garbage ware" inspired the
change.

Another gotcha that may be a player is that there are usually both
Microsoft SATA drivers, and OEM chipset SATA drivers.
If I'm setting up a SSD system drive as a boot drive, and transferring
the contents of the C: drive to it, The SSD transfer utility may not
work properly with the OEM chipset drivers.

Maybe Ken could download X17-24208.iso and X17-24209.iso . Pop those
into Google, should get a web page of links to Digital River, to download
them. That's what I downloaded here, to do things like a Repair Install
of Windows 7 (to SP1 level). Since the installer DVD, also doubles
as one of those 200MB boot CDs, it might be a worthwhile addition
to the toolbox.

32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium x86 SP1 (bootable):
X17-24208.iso 2,563,039,232 bytes

64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP1 (bootable):
X17-24209.iso 3,319,478,272 bytes

I would use the second one for my laptop, which is 64 bit.
I have the first one, to use as a boot CD for any 32 bit systems
that need work. For example, the first one works inside VPC2007
in a virtual machine environment (limited to 32 bit only). I did a
test install of the first one, inside VPC2007, just to see if
it would accept the license key on the laptop COA, and it did.
I didn't attempt to activate (the network connection was
cut off in the VM).

Paul

 

[Ken]

Maybe Ken could download X17-24208.iso and X17-24209.iso . Pop those
into Google, should get a web page of links to Digital River, to download
them. That's what I downloaded here, to do things like a Repair Install
of Windows 7 (to SP1 level). Since the installer DVD, also doubles
as one of those 200MB boot CDs, it might be a worthwhile addition
to the toolbox.

32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium x86 SP1 (bootable):
X17-24208.iso 2,563,039,232 bytes

64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP1 (bootable):
X17-24209.iso 3,319,478,272 bytes

I would use the second one for my laptop, which is 64 bit.
I have the first one, to use as a boot CD for any 32 bit systems
that need work. For example, the first one works inside VPC2007
in a virtual machine environment (limited to 32 bit only). I did a
test install of the first one, inside VPC2007, just to see if
it would accept the license key on the laptop COA, and it did.
I didn't attempt to activate (the network connection was
cut off in the VM).

Paul

Is this the DVD (ISO) version of Windows 7 that you can use if you
already have a Product Key? I have a copy, but I am fearful that I
would need to reload my other software. That is not worth it in this
situation. I can work around the problem, it is just that I did not
understand why it (the boot CD) worked the way it did. Based upon the
comments the two of you have made, I think I am getting closer to the
answer. Perhaps one day when I have nothing to do and the problem eats
away at me, I will take the more drastic steps to solve it. Thanks again.

 

[Paul]

Is this the DVD (ISO) version of Windows 7 that you can use if you
already have a Product Key? I have a copy, but I am fearful that I
would need to reload my other software. That is not worth it in this
situation. I can work around the problem, it is just that I did not
understand why it (the boot CD) worked the way it did. Based upon the
comments the two of you have made, I think I am getting closer to the
answer. Perhaps one day when I have nothing to do and the problem eats
away at me, I will take the more drastic steps to solve it. Thanks again.

If you have a "real" installer DVD, try booting it.

See the sequence in the Option 2 section, on how to get
to the recovery console.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/668-system-recovery-options.html

There's a command prompt option, as well as the ability to
restore from a System Image. I've used the Restore from System Image
on one occasion, where I managed to trash the file system. (The repair
procedure made three tries, and couldn't make the laptop work, so I
had to restore from backup. A backup I'd made earlier the same day
Talk about lucky... )

http://www.sevenforums.com/attachme...-recovery-options-system_recovery_options.jpg

Paul