Windows 7 Home Premium on 300Gb SATA hard drive.

Was working fine but now will only boot in Safe Mode and can even do a system restore but on full boot hangs at the Windows Logo starting screen.
When trying a system repair using the original W7 CD it can't find a windows installation!
Any ideas please?



Also on the screen when it says Load Drivers I can access the C: drive but I've no idea where the SATA drivers would be located.

Hello tap.

If it works in safe mode, the hardware is most probably fine. If the OS starts to boot, the drive has been detected, you can take that to the bank. What happens during boot, that's what needs to be investigated.

Look for an AHCI option in the BIOS and try toggling it on/ff, see if that changes anything.

Can't find AHCI,

It should be there, mate. Maybe labeled as SATA mode or something like that.

Try doing this. Boot into safe mode, open up the command prompt and input

Code:

msconfig

now on the general tab choose selective startup, uncheck all the options, confirm and reboot again.

Did that apart from won't let me uncheck "Use Original Boot Config".
Booted & back to hung on "Starting Windows"

Whilst in Safe Mode ran the W7 CD setup - failed as couldn't identify disks
Where are the SATA drivers on the HD, under System, System32 etc, etc?
This may help AMI Bios 2.56: Mobo MSI RD489 Neo2

Drivers for a sata hard drive got taken care of with the advent of XP SP3 onwards Tap so I doubt it's a driver issue mate.

Anyway back to Mkey.

Yeah, not a driver problem, I seriously doubt that.

Lets get back to safe mode and do the following: open up the command prompt and input

Code:

sfc /scannow

you may need to have the OS installation disk present in the drive. Note the report, now enter

Code:

chkdsl c: /r /f /x

and reboot, allow for the scan to complete. Note the report.

Download this http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?qs1d6i69h6z9h43 run it as admin in safe mode and attach the created report.

Wolfeymole: It can't see the installation & is asking for the drivers. Surely someone must know where they sit on the HD. Until proven wrong it must be a view to follow.

You obviously have the win 7 install disk so have you tried booting from it via the optical drive as first boot and then attempting to run a repair, if it gets that far?

I've already done a scandisk & chkdsk with no errors but attached is the pchf,zip. I'm intrigued as to what this tells you.

Yes, and as per post #1 it can't see the installation.

Do you mean it says something like "No hard drives present"?

If you have seen a W7 Repair screen it will show installed Operating Systems (OS) on whatever disks etc it can find. If it can see an OS it will attempt to repair it or give a reason why it can't.
My Repair screen approached from whatever whichway shows no OS. It then asks for drivers & it's bizarre 'cos it does then see the c: drive & I could point it at the SATA drivers if I knew where they were.

In the second picture here, which is just an example, what do you see?

http://www.nirmaltv.com/2009/12/17/how-to-repair-windows-7-installation/

By the way Tap I've installed enough operating systems over the years to choke a mule.