If you followed the methods in my earlier post, upon unplugging the hard drive from the computer’s USB port you would have been unable to boot to the newly installed Operating System. Keeping the drive tethered to your computer is probably not what you had intended. There’s a simple procedure that fixes this!
In my example, the USB Installer is on Drive D:\, and the operating system is installed to the desired Drive C:\.
Step 1 — Open a command prompt with administrative privileges. To do so, open the Start Menu, and type “CMD” in the search prompt. Right-Click on the resulting program and “Run as Administrator”. This will invoke UAC as configured.
Step 2 — In the command prompt, type the following command:
bcdboot C:\Windows /s C:
Step 3 — Open up Disk Manager. To do so, right click on the “Computer” hotlink in the start menu (or your “My Computer” if you’ve added it to the desktop) and select “Manage”. Again, this will invoke UAC as configured. On the Explorer Window you are presented with, the left pane will contain Disk Manager. Click it once to open it to the main pane.
Step 4 — Mark the C:\ Partition as Active by right clicking on the graphical map and selecting “Mark Partition as Active..” from the context menu.
Step 5 — Unmount the USB drive (Eject first), and reboot. All Done!
Tags: bcdboot, bcdedit, Bootable Harddrive, Installation, Windows 7
When not spending time behind a computer screen bringing you his latest blog posts; you might catch him playing video games on his PC; eating/cooking something in the kitchen of his house in Northwest Georgia; watching movies from his Netflix queue; volunteering for the Boy Scouts of America; fueling his wilderness interests by hiking, camping, backpacking, rafting, kayaking; sustaining his established hobbies in Amateur Radio, videography, photography, or music; running his DJ business with his brother as a partner; or hanging out with his friends doing any number of fun activities. 