windows boot option gone

On my macbook pro (late 2008) I installed windows 7 without having osx installed.
Later I installed osx on a different hard drive. But when I did that it killed my windows 7 option in the boot menu. The only option now is osx.
Is there a way to repair my windows 7 boot option?

I can still see my windows hard drive and all the files while I'm in osx.

Assuming OS X and Windows are still on separate HD's. Have you tried pressing the "Option" key upon booting?

- Nick

p.s. Moved thread to better area.

Yes, they are on separate hard drives.
Holding the option key gives me one choice, osx.
In disk utility my windows drive is listed as - partition map scheme: master boot record.
I tried unplugging the osx hard drive but then I get a flashing folder with a "?"

dumasaaron said:

I tried unplugging the osx hard drive but then I get a flashing folder with a "?"

Click to expand...

Yes...this was an important roubleshooting test. If you returned the computer to a state before OS X was installed on the 2nd HD. You would expect the computer to work as it did before (only booting Windows).

If when you unplugged the HD that OS X was on...and now Windows will not boot on its own from the other HD (as it was doing before)...I would suspect something happened to that Windows install.

Or...if this happened immediately after OS X was installed on the 2nd HD (and booted from)...I might also suspect the method which Windows was installed on that 1st HD. On an Apple computer if wanting to boot into Windows natively...you need to use "Bootcamp" during the Windows install. If Windows was not installed using Bootcamp initially (and some other non-supported method was used)...this could be why the computer is not recognizing the Windows install now.

- Nick

When you are in Mac OS X, can you go into System Preferences > Startup Disk, do you have the Windows 7 disk as a startup option? If so, select it and restart. Did it work?

In startup disk there is my osx and something called "network startup".
I'm guessing however it was booting windows before was taken over by how mac does booting.
It was a bootleg setup anyways, I should clean install with bootcamp, I just didn't feel like doing that yet.
Thanks for for your time pigoo and ferrarr.

Keep in mind that a Mac boots using EFI. What happened is when you installed OS X it overwrote the Windows 7 boot sector. It's almost impossible to repair Windows on a Mac using the Windows disk. You need to do a clean install of Windows again or otherwise use Boot Camp. If your Mac was a PC, repairing Windows 7 to restore the boot sector would be easy but not on a Mac.

chscag said:

Keep in mind that a Mac boots using EFI. What happened is when you installed OS X it overwrote the Windows 7 boot sector. It's almost impossible to repair Windows on a Mac using the Windows disk. You need to do a clean install of Windows again or otherwise use Boot Camp. If your Mac was a PC, repairing Windows 7 to restore the boot sector would be easy but not on a Mac.

Click to expand...

Exactly what I was thinking Charlie. The OS X install made some modifications...circumventing the previous Windows install. Could be a situation of..."If it ain't broke don't fix it." lol

Agree. Now that OS X was installed...may need to do a fresh install of Windows using bootcamp.

- Nick

Hello, gentlemen. I finally just gave it up and reinstalled windows. Everything is the way it should be now. Thanks for the input.

Congrats! A bit of a pain I'm sure...but great to have everything working.

- Nick