Installed (?) Win 7 to hybrid drive--won't boot

Have a Seagate 500LM000 hybrid drive I put in my desktop PC with Gigabyte P45T-ES3G motherboard and Intel E8400 CPU. Everything worked until old hard drive crashed. I partitioned the new drive with GParted--as follows:
/dev/sda1 210GiB NTFS; /dev/sda2 unallotted (don't know how that happened)
/dev/sda3 extended 255.5GiB; /dev/sda5 29.76GiB ext4; /dev/sda6 117.52GiB ext4; /dev/sda7 6.82GiB Linux swap ; unallotted--91.45GiB. Have PCLinuxOS installed on /dev/sda5 / and /dev/sda6 /home. Grub boots to Linux. Tried to clonzilla Win7 from flaky old drive, but wouldn't boot. Finally gave up and installed Win 7 Pro from original 64-bit MS upgrade install disk copyright 2009, P/N X15-60531-01. (But see below.)
That won't boot. Tried all the repair functions from the install disk. Then NOTHING
would boot. At present have reinstalled Grub so I have at least PCLOS working. I never had this kind of trouble before, but I never had a hybrid drive before. Have
Googled without any useful information. Just before reinstalling grub, the system
would only look for a cdrom!

Just this minute looked at the windows partition and found that Win 7 did NOT
reinstall! The original clonezilla copy is still on the drive! That would be perfect
if I could make it boot! Note that booting the original flaky drive was a sometime
thing. I would dearly like to keep the original Windows--there are several hundred
dollars worth of software on it!

Your organization was recommended to me by someone on the PCLOS Forum who
said you guys know everything--so what now?
Thanx for any useful input! --doug

 

Adding System Specs

 

I cannot access Windows on the drive at all. After trying to install W7 afresh, and running the
command lines that supposedly fix boot and mbr, the computer won't boot at all to anything.
It comes up "Boot from CD ROM--press any key" and if I don't press a key, it recycles and does the
same thing. I have reinstalled grub so I can at least boot to Linux. I would REALLY like to keep
the old set of apps that are on the drive (as verified from Linux) and make it boot, but I sure
don't know how!

 

First step was successful. Second step produced: "The system cannot find the file specified. "
Proceeded anyway with next step; got message: "Successfully scanned Windows installations. Total identified Windows installations:1
[1] C:\Windows.old\Windows
Add installation to boot list? Yes)Y)/No(N)/All(A): answered Y
ran Bootrec.exe /fixmbr--OK
ran Bootrec.exe /fixboot--OK
entered sfc/scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\Windows
Got message "There is a system repair running Restart Windows and run sfc again.
Tried that and got same message.
Trying to start without Install disk in drive, and got message start from CDrom-press any key
and that's back to where we came in.
The second time around it found Windows and Windows (restored_ which I selected when
it was the second time.
I hope I haven't made things worse! Thanx for the input, and if you have another idea,\please post it. --doug

 

If you try to install Win7 on a hard disk already containing Linux, your boot sector may be overwritten by Win7 leaving you out of Linux. Rule of thumb - install Linux at the very end after you have installed all other OSs.

Regarding the hybrid drive - is it the old crashed one or have you purchased it new ? There is no difference in installing or using the hybrid drive and hdd, except the speed.

 

Yes I did all the obvious things. The hybrid drive is new, not an old one. I'm aware that I should install Windows first, but I CAN'T install Windows, new or windows.old, altho I would very much like to get windows.old to be installable, or bootable. I installed Linux on the drive AFTER I found I could not boot Windows, so at least I can see what's on the drive. I have just spent a lot of money on programs that were supposed to fix this and didn't. I appreciate the things that were suggested here, but I'm just running out of luck altogether, I guess.

 

Backup your data & delete ALL partitions from Linux. Install Win 7 first & let it handle partitions - create only 1 or 2 partitions from Windows for OS & your data. When your Win7 is ok, then & only then, install Linux on the remaining hard disk.

 

If I do as you say, Windows will take up half the drive, even if I try to reduce its size. And there
will be no chance to salvage any of the programs that are in Windows.old. I might as well just
forget about Windows if I have to start from scratch. With a typical price of $29.95 for most
apps, I have a batch of money invested in what won't boot.

 

I will bet that 99% of users don't have the app key for even a week after installing the app, unless maybe it's a $200 app like MS Office. I need to know what good is Windows.old if you can't
move the apps from it back to a fresh installation. To be honest, I will miss some of the
audio recording apps and a later and fuller version of AutoCAD, but if there's no way to save
them, I might just forget about Windows altogether. ( I didn't have MS Office so I won't miss that.)

 

See if the publisher of the program could help you. Most smaller one would gladly mail you the key if your email id has been registered with them.

 

Have you tried Belarc Advisor? It will give you all your Key Codes.
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

 

Thanx, Mr. Bill. I'll look into that. I might have to have the program installed first, I don't know.
I'll use Linux to copy the Windows Download directory--that should have most of the apps.
Except for the ones that the idiots at the factory sold with "setup.exe" as the installer! That really
pxxxes me off!

 

Just an aside to the above: I thought I'd go to M/S and download a fresh copy of Windows 7 Pro
that would have the updates on it. They asked for my key code, which I read off the plastic thing that holds the install disks (one each for 32 and 64 in those days). And they asked what language. A label on the box says, "Win Pro 7 English VLP US Only DVD Made in Puerto Rico For distribution in US only." So isn't it interesting that the great Microsoft who made this thing
wrote back and said wrong language. (!) Please choose another language. Well, the only other language I even pretend to speak is German, and I don't think that's what they were looking for.

 

The Disc's that I got from MS for Win 7 came from Canada. Got them as a Student Discount about 4 years or so ago.

 

Are you offering to send the disk or does "free" mean you got it free?

--doug

 

What are you referring to?