What is the trick to get this dual-disk Win7 laptop to boot from asingle disk?

On Fri, 16 Aug 2013 12:09:48 -0600, H-Man wrote:

Yup, they will show up like that in the BIOS, that's not what they'll
look like to Windows though. See my last post and hopefully that will
make it a bit easier to find.

oh. OK. I got this a little late.
I will check the RAID setup as soon as I go through the unread posts.

On Fri, 16 Aug 2013 14:47:44 -0400, Paul wrote:

As for the 32 bit versus 64 bit installation choice, a retail boxes
Microsoft OS may come with two DVD discs.

Yes. Window 7 Ultimate has two disks, one 64 and the other 32 bit.
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3752/9...a7b09010_o.gif

If you were running newer Adobe software
Nope. Nothing I know of is 64 bit.

If you have more than 4GB of system RAM installed
Nope. I have 4 GB of RAM.

Or, if the video card has a fair amount of RAM resident
Hmmm... ??? I have no idea how much RAM is on the video
card.

Downloading and installing Belarc Advisor, it says I have
an NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT [Display adapter] (2x), but,
strangely, I don't see where the video memory is listed.

That's odd. Maybe it's one of the numbers in the processor
section of the belarc report?
2.80 gigahertz Intel Core2 Extreme
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
6144 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (2 total)
Not hyper-threaded

On Fri, 16 Aug 2013 14:47:44 -0400, Paul wrote:

The 64 bit OS, runs 64 bit or 32 bit code.
The 32 bit OS, runs 32 bit or 16 bit executables.
The 32 bit choice would normally be "safe"

This was an EXCEllENT point about the odd 16-bit code!

Danny D. wrote:
On Fri, 16 Aug 2013 14:47:44 -0400, Paul wrote:

As for the 32 bit versus 64 bit installation choice, a retail boxes
Microsoft OS may come with two DVD discs.

Yes. Window 7 Ultimate has two disks, one 64 and the other 32 bit.
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3752/9...a7b09010_o.gif

If you were running newer Adobe software
Nope. Nothing I know of is 64 bit.

If you have more than 4GB of system RAM installed
Nope. I have 4 GB of RAM.

Or, if the video card has a fair amount of RAM resident
Hmmm... ??? I have no idea how much RAM is on the video
card.

Downloading and installing Belarc Advisor, it says I have
an NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT [Display adapter] (2x), but,
strangely, I don't see where the video memory is listed.

That's odd. Maybe it's one of the numbers in the processor
section of the belarc report?
2.80 gigahertz Intel Core2 Extreme
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
6144 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (2 total)
Not hyper-threaded

OK, so reviewing the info so far, it's a Dell XPS M1730.

http://www.cnet.com/laptops/dell-xps...-32687269.html

The video configuration is "Dual 256MB Nvidia GeForce 8700M GT in SLI".
That counts as 256MB gaming memory, and counts as 512MB of address
space for the video memory. Basically, there are two GPUs, and each
GPU has a copy of the same info stored in a memory local to the GPU.
Software needs to load up both memories (total 512MB of stuff
needs to be loaded). But from a functional perspective, the
texture memory a game can use counts as 256MB.

Your total address space (roughly), is 3*256MB + 4GB = 4.75GB,
and so you would get a slight benefit from using a 64 bit OS
(since the address space needs total more than 4.75GB). But
the machine would still work, and not throw away too much
system memory, if run with a 32 bit OS.

*******

One reason for researching the model, is I was checking for
"MediaDirect". The presence of MediaDirect as a feature,
affects partition structure and booting.

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.shtml

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/hpa-issues.shtml

"4. If MD button not pressed, prepare to boot normally.
Hide the HPA, replace partition table descriptor #4
with the saved copy (from step 3), and set
partition #2 active (the XP partition)."

Now, normally this would nor be a problem. As I interpret that
second page, if a user installs a Windows OS for themselves,
the Dell MBR is wiped and a Windows MBR is present. The logic
to swap in the HPA is missing, and partition meddling will not
be present.

But, consider what is happening in your case. The Windows MBR
is on Disk 1. You unplugged Disk 1 and attempted to repair Disk 0.
The Dell MBR could be on Disk 0. Now, maybe the Windows 7 repair,
when done on Disk 0, overwrites the MBR (does the equivalent
of the old FixMBR, which now has a new name). If it did not
examine the MBR (sector 0 of the disk 0), then the Dell MBR
might still be there. And the Dell logic of making
partition #2 active, may be inconsistent with getting the
machine to boot.

I'm thinking, booting the Recovery CD or an installer DVD,
getting to the command prompt and doing

bootrec /fixmbr

might help, followed by another attempt to boot.

(Bootrec option "fixmbr" mentioned here... Probably has
existed since Vista.)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

If I was doing it though, I would "change hats" and switch to
"forensic mode". I'd boot my Linux LiveCD, run "dd" and make
a copy of sector 0 on Disk 0, then examine it to see what kind
of 440 byte boot code is in there. I would then need to compare
the bytes seen, to whatever web site has a copy of the
Windows 7 440 byte MBR boot code on display.

Paul

H-Man wrote:

on POST you should be able to get to the RAID controller BIOS

At POST, I pressed F2, and scrolled to System-Device Info, which showed:
Primary Hard Drive = 320 GB HDD
Secondary Hard Drive = 500 GB HDD
Video Controller = NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT
Video Memory = 512 MB
Flash Cache Module = (none)

Scrolling to Onboard Devices-SATA Operation:
RAID Autodetect/ATA = on (RAID On = off) (RAID Autodetect/AHCI = off)
RAID Autodetect / ATA = RAID if signed drives, otherwise ATA
RAID On = SATA is configured for RAQID on every boot
RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI = RAID if signed drives, otherwise ACCI
The factory default setting is RAID Autodetect / AHCI

Danny D. wrote:

Ah! Control + I!

Unfortunately, control + i didn't do anything after trying it
three times during POST.

I'm operating on it now ...

Danny D. wrote:

At POST, I pressed F2, and scrolled to System-Device Info, which showed:
Primary Hard Drive = 320 GB HDD
Secondary Hard Drive = 500 GB HDD
Video Controller = NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT
Video Memory = 512 MB
Flash Cache Module = (none)

Scrolling to Onboard Devices-SATA Operation:
RAID Autodetect/ATA = on (RAID On = off) (RAID Autodetect/AHCI = off)
RAID Autodetect / ATA = RAID if signed drives, otherwise ATA
RAID On = SATA is configured for RAQID on every boot
RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI = RAID if signed drives, otherwise ACCI
The factory default setting is RAID Autodetect / AHCI

Here's a screenshot of the current RAID settings in the BIOS:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3673/9...0d2ac933_o.gif

I left everything at the default.

Paul wrote:

Your total address space (roughly), is 3*256MB + 4GB = 4.75GB,
and so you would get a slight benefit from using a 64 bit OS

Hi Paul,
Thanks for that great information about the laptop.

Here's a screenshot from the BIOS which confirms you're correct
about the 512KB on the video board:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7300/9...ea61c7c4_o.gif

Based on your suggestions, I've decided to go with 64-bit Windows
7 on this laptop, which will be my first 64-bit Windows ever.

Paul wrote:

So what are you committed to at this point ?
A clean install of the OS, with one disk only present ?
Or are you still trying to "repair install" the existing OS on Disk 0 ?

Hi Paul,

I tried one more time to "Repair" the 32-bit operating system.

So, I removed the second (500GB) HDD, and started the repair
process for the last time on the original HDD (320GB).
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7421/9...a2e434d8_o.gif

Interestingly, when I rebooted with the Windows installation CD,
it has *no problem* seeing the entire HDD so, at that point, I
started to doubt that SATA drivers were my problem - and began
to seriously doubt the Windows Repair process.
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2810/9...2dd467f4_o.gif

Nonetheless, moving forward, tried to get the operating system
to show up in the Repair selection box, to no avail.
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5516/9...97feae4e_o.gif

One complication was that, given the single SATA driver download
from Dell, there were still two different "Setup Information"
files to choose from:
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5545/9...0a67316d_o.gif

And, each of those collections had a dozen files inside:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7457/9...5cc831fd_o.gif

But, after having selected, at random, a few drivers, and having none
of them work to find the operating system, I gave up on this "Repair"
approach, once and for all!

Danny D. wrote:
Danny D. wrote:

At POST, I pressed F2, and scrolled to System-Device Info, which showed:
Primary Hard Drive = 320 GB HDD
Secondary Hard Drive = 500 GB HDD
Video Controller = NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT
Video Memory = 512 MB
Flash Cache Module = (none)

Scrolling to Onboard Devices-SATA Operation:
RAID Autodetect/ATA = on (RAID On = off) (RAID Autodetect/AHCI = off)
RAID Autodetect / ATA = RAID if signed drives, otherwise ATA
RAID On = SATA is configured for RAQID on every boot
RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI = RAID if signed drives, otherwise ACCI
The factory default setting is RAID Autodetect / AHCI

Here's a screenshot of the current RAID settings in the BIOS:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3673/9...0d2ac933_o.gif

I left everything at the default.


Just for fun, have you booted to the recovery console
(Command Prompt) with an installer DVD or the recovery CD,
and run...

bootrec /fixmbr

That would repair the Windows MBR boot code on Disk 0, when
just Disk 0 is present.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

That's in case the Dell MBR is still present on Disk 0.

Paul