restoring Vista boot loader

[John DeStefano]

I have a computer with a Vista Home Premium installation that up to
now has been working fine, but today the Vista operating system no
longer booted. The hard disc is fine, and the BIOS shows the proper
information, but the Vista boot screen never comes up. I have two
other Windows operating systems (XP Pro and XP x64) running on
partitions on the same drive, and the XP boot loader still works for
those. I tried repairing the Vista boot with my Vista installation
DVD that came with the computer, but the installation did not
recognize the drive, which is SATA.

I am able to get the proper SATA drivers from my PC manufacturer
(Gateway), but I'm not sure how to go about using them with the Vista
DVD to restore the boot loader, since it doesn't recognize the hard
drive.

Any ideas on how to proceed?

Thank very much.

~John

 

[Kue2]

Go Here:
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20...uninstall-vista-beta-2-for-dual-boot-with-xp/
Or Here:
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2006/12/05/windows-recovery-environment.aspx

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

EasyBCD by NeoSmart Technologies would be your answer, it provides a
graphical front end to the BCDEdit Command line that makes it easy for you
to define start-up settings and edit boot entries on the new Windows
Longhorn Server/Vista boot manager. http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

 

[John DeStefano]

Hi Kue2,

Thanks, but ...

Go Here:http://www.istartedsomething.com/20...uninstall-vista-beta-2-for-dual-boot-with-xp/

This explains how to install Vista on a new system with other OSes.
Vista is already installed on my system; I just can't get it to boot.

Or Here:http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2006/12/05/windows-recovery-environment.aspx

This explains how to use a Windows Recovery Environment partition to
recover an installation. Unfortunately, my system does not have one
of these recovery partitions.

Thanks,
~John

 

[John DeStefano]

Thanks, Andre. I have used this before to manage the Vista boot
loader, but I didn't think of it in this case, as I don't have access
to Vista at the moment, and I had no idea that EasyBCD also worked in
XP, which it does! I'll give it a try.

The part that bothers me is that there doesn't seem to be a legitimate
method of fixing this without installing a 3rd-party application
(EasyBCD), and that Vista's own installation script can't seem to fix
its own boot loader.

Thank you,
~John

 

[Kerry Brown]

You can fix it by booting from the Vista DVD. It sounds like you may need to
load the vista hard drive controller. You can do this while booting from the
DVD. In figure 4 at the following link you would click on the Load Drivers
button. You would need the driver on a floppy, CD/DVD, USB flash drive or
external hard drive.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial148.html