I'm getting frustrated with an issue with my PC. I don't post about problems very often (if ever), because google usually has it all. Ok, here goes.
What i did:
I have Dell XPS L502X. It has one SATA (AHCI) HDD and Optical Drive. Windows 7 is installed into SATA HDD. All works fine. So i replace SATA HDD with SSD drive and fresh install WIndows 7 there. All works fine. I then throw away optical drive and use optical drive caddy to install the original SATA HDD in place of optical drive.
What i want to have:
I want to dual boot Windows 7 from SSD drive and SATA HDD. What could be easier, i thought? First of all, since it is a laptop, there is no option in BIOS to boot from secondary HDD. I thought it would let me boot from "CD-ROM", but no.
So i installed EasyBCD to SSD HDD and went from there. I tried adding a boot item to reference directly Windows 7 on second HDD, tried playing with Grub4Dos (hiding/unhiding partitions, mapping hd0 to hd1), but no matter what i do, i get the infamous 7B error (BSOD). I.e. Windows 7 on second (SATA) HDD actually starts to boot, but this never succeeds.
Internet says that 7B is related to missing or corrupted drivers for hard disk drive. I tried every possible suggestion. But at the end i came to a conclusion that my case is different.
When i remove the first (SSD) drive, i can boot just fine from the second (SATA) HDD sitting in place of optical drive (if you wonder how i do it without an option in BIOS, i booted it directly from grub residing on flash stick). Therefore i think it proves that it is not a driver problem. It is more likely a problem with Windows 7 getting confused when it boots from secondary disk. Unfortunately, hiding the partitions of SSD drive or remapping disks in Grub4Dos didn't help (i mentioned earlier).
At this point, i'm out of ideas. Googling just leads to the same info i've already seen. If someone could please give me a fresh idea, i would be grateful.
Edited by beskov, 14 July 2012 - 08:17 AM.
