Windows 7 – “Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Press Enter” Fix

The Problem

I recently installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit on a brand new SATA hard drive. I have another SATA HDD as well as a smaller EIDE (PATA) hard drive inside my machine. After rebooting, I recieved a message saying “Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Press Enter.” I thought that somehow the bootloader got messed up because my other SATA HDD had Vista on it, so I booted to the Windows 7 installation DVD and ran the startup repair tool, as well as running the command prompt commands “bootrec.exe /FixMBR” and “bootrec.exe /FixBoot.” I restarted and still recieved the same error.

After trying nearly everything, from switching the SATA slots on the actual motherboard to completely removing Vista from the old SATA HDD, I was lost. Another very odd thing I found was that I could boot to Windows 7 fine if I left the Windows 7 installation DVD in the drive and just didn’t boot to it.

The Fix

What it ended up being was that apparently the entire time I’ve been using my computer, the bootloader information was all on the EIDE hard drive. My BIOS had taken the EIDE hard drive and made it the master/primary, even though I had set my SATA hard drive to be the first to be loaded. What I did to move the master boot record to my Windows 7 HDD was I first unplugged/disabled the EIDE HDD. Then, I booted into the Windows 7 installation DVD and ran the repair tool + FixMBR/FixBoot. I then reconnected the EIDE HDD and restarted. My unit was now booting into Windows 7 with no issues!

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