Now What? Vista Ultimate Blue Screen

[Lorin]

Crashed with bad disk indicated.
Interestingly I had a few flashes of a solid blue screen once in a while
over the past two days. Must have been a waring of impending doom.
Ran Vista SP1 boot up from CD ( I use F12 to select boot device)
Selected language
selected "Repair Your Computer"
Skipped "Load Drivers"
But I did explore this and saw all drives and folders present.
Ran repair at "Startup Repair"

Ran successfully.
Checked Diagnostic and Repair Details.
"The Partition Table does not have a valid system partition.
Partition table repair
Completed successfully
Error code 0x0
took 51 sec.

System Disk=\Device\HardDisk

ReStarted on my command
but still will not boot from hard disk.

So now the interesting part and maybe where I can get in if someone can help
and or confirms my thoughts.
I have too much to do all over agains and the AUTOMATIC BACKUP kept NOT
running. Another problem to fix.

Anyway, looking at the folders when the "Load Driver" opportunity came up
during this repair process:
The hard disks are all there but C: was not C:.
The D: shown is actually the C: (boot) drive.
Two other drives looked OK.
What is up with this?
These are all SATA drives.
Do I need to switch cables to the motherboard so the repair process sees the
physical C: drive as C: or do I use the BIOS to change things?
As I said earier, all drives seem to be fully there but maybe tjhe repair sw
is confused about what drive to boot or what drive to repair.
There is no choice to select a drive to repair that I can see.
What next?
Suggestions please. (this is my Media Center TV too)

 

[Malke]

Crashed with bad disk indicated.
Interestingly I had a few flashes of a solid blue screen once in a while
over the past two days. Must have been a waring of impending doom.
Ran Vista SP1 boot up from CD ( I use F12 to select boot device)
Selected language
selected "Repair Your Computer"
Skipped "Load Drivers"
But I did explore this and saw all drives and folders present.
Ran repair at "Startup Repair"

Ran successfully.
Checked Diagnostic and Repair Details.
"The Partition Table does not have a valid system partition.
Partition table repair
Completed successfully
Error code 0x0
took 51 sec.

System Disk=\Device\HardDisk

ReStarted on my command
but still will not boot from hard disk.

So now the interesting part and maybe where I can get in if someone can
help and or confirms my thoughts.
I have too much to do all over agains and the AUTOMATIC BACKUP kept NOT
running. Another problem to fix.

Anyway, looking at the folders when the "Load Driver" opportunity came up
during this repair process:
The hard disks are all there but C: was not C:.
The D: shown is actually the C: (boot) drive.
Two other drives looked OK.
What is up with this?
These are all SATA drives.
Do I need to switch cables to the motherboard so the repair process sees
the physical C: drive as C: or do I use the BIOS to change things?
As I said earier, all drives seem to be fully there but maybe tjhe repair
sw is confused about what drive to boot or what drive to repair.
There is no choice to select a drive to repair that I can see.
What next?
Suggestions please. (this is my Media Center TV too)

It sounds like your hard drive has died. Run a thorough diagnostic on it
using a utility downloaded from the drive mftr.'s website. If the drive
fails any physical tests, replace it.

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot

Malke

 

[Lorin]

Which drive?
i.e. how do I identify it from however I look at it.
It seems that Vista is calling a drive C: when in fact it was never C: but
D: at least in the recovery scenario.

I have four large drives and I do have the mfr disk Seagate.
What is the software to test with?

If Vista says it fixed it, then why did it not boot?
Vista only made one pass at fixing and said it was fixed.
Maybe it was trying to fix the wrong drive because the drive it says is C:
never was a boot drive. So is Vista trying to boot that. Can it change the
boot order or change the BIOS to change the order?
The drive it calls D: was the boot drive C:.
So what I am looking for is how to know who is doing what so I can know what
physical drive is called so i can work on what was the C: boot drive.
Sorry if I am not clearer.

 

[Len Mattix]

If you don't want to try any of the good advise offered by others in the
group and for no apparent reason are dead certain that your drives are just
being mis-detected then... open computer case, disconnect all drives except
your boot drive then run the repair from Vista DVD.

Good luck,

Len

 

[Peter Foldes]

Which Drive. The drive that your system boots from. That drive. It sounds like that (the one that holds your OS and boots) has DIED