Step One: Make sure your Sata Configuration didn’t change in the motherboard BIOS. Make sure Intel Rapid Storage is enabled.

From the Field: The motherboard in the computer I troubleshot was a Gigabyte H87-D3H. For some reason the motherboard reverted to a backup of its settings. When the settings reverted, the Sata Configuration switched to ACHI and Intel Rapid Storage Technology was disabled. I turned the RAID back on and enabled the Intel Rapid Storage Technology.

Step Two: Boot on a Recovery disc. Go through the prompts and select Repair Your Computer. The disc will search for any Windows installations and try to fix them.

From the Field: Since the computer tried booting on the hard drives in ACHI mode, Windows had gotten corrupted. Due to some complications, I unplugged one hard drive. I put a Windows 7 Professional disc into the DVD drive and booted on it. Once it came up I got the following error. “This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of windows.” Here is my article on how to get your disc to work.

Step Three: Once Startup Repair finds the issues, reboot your computer and it will automatically fix the problems. Log into Windows.   From the Field: Startup Repair searched for the Windows Installation and found the directory. It notified me it found something wrong with the boot partition. It asked me to do a restart. I did a restart and it fixed whatever the boot issue was. I logged into Windows and everything was fine.

Step Four: Once booted into Windows open the Intel Rapid Storage Technology software and reconfigure your RAID.  From the Field: I logged into Windows and everything seemed fine. I shut the computer down and plugged in the other hard drive. I then started the computer and opened the Intel Rapid Storage Technology software. I reconfigured the RAID and it started migrating the data to the hard drive I had plugged in last. After a few hours my RAID 1 had finished migrating.

What if Startup Repair didn’t fix your issue? There is still hope. Find the CMD prompt tool on the recovery disc.

Step Five: Type C:   Press Enter. If your computer is recognizing the drive it should look like the following picture.

(RAID) Make sure both of your hard drives are plugged in and try the same command. If you still can’t find the drive try a couple other drive letters ex. ( D: , F: ,) it is possible your drive letter got changed.

Step Six: Next Type dir . Check to see if the Windows and Users directories are there. If so, type: bootrec.exe /fixmbr and press Enter . It should say the operation completed successfully. When that is completed type: bootrec.exe /fixboot and press Enter.  Reboot your computer. Log into Windows.

Step Seven: If your computer still doesn’t come up, boot on the recovery disc again. Go to command prompt again and run the commands in the previous step again. Once you have run finished those commands run these bootrec.exe /ScanOs and bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd . Reboot your computer and see if you can log into Windows again.

I hope these tips helped you out! Please post in the comments if it worked/failed or if you have additional troubleshooting tips! Follow me on Twitter! Thanks.

This was posted by techspeeder.

Tips: Seven Forums