Vista boot agent changes

[Guest]

I have genuine media centre working fine previously.For hype of Vista , i
decided to install it on a fresh 80 gb Hard disk.During this i disconnected
my media centre hard disk.It was clean installation without
problem.Everything was fine.,till i decided to go back to my media centre
hard disk.I discoonected my vista hard drive n restarted media centre hard
disk.Now it is giving strange messages while booting.I donot want to
reinstall my media centre again.Any help will be welcome.

 

[Paul Smith]

I have genuine media centre working fine previously.For hype of Vista , i
decided to install it on a fresh 80 gb Hard disk.During this i
disconnected
my media centre hard disk.It was clean installation without
problem.Everything was fine.,till i decided to go back to my media centre
hard disk.I discoonected my vista hard drive n restarted media centre hard
disk.Now it is giving strange messages while booting.I donot want to
reinstall my media centre again.Any help will be welcome.

What are the strange messages?

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.windowsresource.net/

*Remove 'nospam.' to reply by e-mail*

 

[Guest]

ntldr not fpound something like that.I quickly disconnected the drive as i
dont want to reinstall..

 

[John Barnes]

You will need to copy the ntldr ntdetect.com and boot.ini files onto the
drive with the Vista boot file and may have to modify the entry on the
boot.ini

 

[Guest]

I m newbie in editing boot ini.
Can somebody explain step by step?

 

[John Barnes]

How many drives do you have? Then list the drives (0,1, etc) and indicate
what the each partition (1,2,3 etc) has on it and how it is designated
(system,boot,etc).

 

[thecreator]

Hi Sanjay,

When you installed Vista on a fresh 80 GB Hard Drive, was your XP Media
Center Hard Drive connected? Were you dual-booting at the time or just
running VISTA?

How did you disconnect your media centre hard drive?

 

[PowerUser]

Boot thru the RC of the XP cd and try executing

fixboot
fixmbr
bootcfg /rebuild

 

[Guest]

My media centre hard drive was not connected as a precautionary measure when
i installed vista.When I had seen whats vista for 2 days, I wanted to go back
on my media centre for some work.So i Discoonected disk of vista and i
reconnected media centre disk and rebooted .Is it not forced selling of
vista?That too on a evaluation version as u cannot uninstall vista?Please
comment and help

 

[John Barnes]

You can uninstall Vista anytime you want to. So how is that forced selling.

 

[Guest]

Please explain the procedure...

 

[Rock]

My media centre hard drive was not connected as a precautionary measure
when
i installed vista.When I had seen whats vista for 2 days, I wanted to go
back
on my media centre for some work.So i Discoonected disk of vista and i
reconnected media centre disk and rebooted .Is it not forced selling of
vista?That too on a evaluation version as u cannot uninstall vista?Please
comment and help

If the drive with media center was truly disconnected - you haven't said how
you disconnected it - when Vista was installed then the Vista installation
has nothing to do with your current problem.

 

[Guest]

I also thought so...but the fact is it is just not allowing me to boot my
media centre hard disk giving nddlr sort of messages due to boot agent change
even after physically removing vista drive ..I physically disconnected media
centre drive before i installed vista..

 

[John Barnes]

What kind of machine do you have? Do you have your XP Media Center install
CD? I asked before, what kind of drives do you have and how are they
connected. IDE SATA if IDE did you disconnect the xp drive from the
primary master and replace the drive with the one you installed Vista on.
What happens with the Vista drive connected. What happens with the Media
Center drive connected? Are you familiar with XP Recovery Console? If you
have the message that ntldr is missing, it means your Master Boot Record is
not pointing to the XP boot record to start the ntldr program. If you will
answer these questions, we can begin the process of recovering your xp
system, but we need a starting point

 

[Guest]

Sanjay! Concentrate on what John Barnes is asking you. He will get you back
in business with your media center, I promise you. Colin

 

[Guest]

oops...sorry for mistake..I have p4 3.1 original intel with 3 hard disks.TWO
sata disk 160 &80 GB each and one IDE 80 GB.I have installed media centre on
non SATA disk and vista on SATA
I disconnected NON SATA manuaaly and attached 80 GB SATA and installed
Vista.Then after 2 days when i decided to go back on Media centre i.e.old non
sata disk the problem started.
Yes i have cd of media centre with me.
sorry, I m not familiar with xp recovery console.
When I connect vista drive it works smooth without any problem.
The problem comes only when i want to load media centre minus vista drive on
my pC as i dont want to mess with my media centre drive which was perfectly
alright and uptodate in all sense.
Hope this much info is sufficient to solve this problem
Thanks for the help i m receiving.

 

[PowerUser]

My media centre hard drive was not connected as a precautionary measure
when
i installed vista.When I had seen whats vista for 2 days, I wanted to go
back
on my media centre for some work.So i Discoonected disk of vista and i
reconnected media centre disk and rebooted .Is it not forced selling

Selling? Who sold you anything? Did you read anything before installing a
non-production ready OS? Anyone with this much knowledge shouldn't really
be installing any OS, let alone non-production ready ones. And there is
nothing wrong with Vista, nor is MS forcing you to use any OS- In fact
they're getting no money from you using Vista right now.

Secondly, you are obviously incapable of answering questions people have
repeatedly put to you, nor trying the RC. You had NOT disconnected the
drive fully, and you will not admit it for whatever strange reason/s you
have.

Thirdly, if you need help, this is NOT the place to bad-mouth Windows.
We're all enthusiasts (and you're really not convincing anyway). The
problem is you. If you can't tell us exactly what you did to cause this,
you won't get any help.


of

 

[Guest]

Hello everyone and thanks to those who bothered to reply to my problem
including PowerUser.

Did I Offend anyone?and why so? I m telling a fact which happened on my PC.I
m microsoft user for last 12 years and I know what I m saying.May be
initially i was not specific.

:

1.> Selling? Who sold you anything? Did you read anything before
installing a
non-production ready OS? Anyone with this much knowledge shouldn't really
be installing any OS, let alone non-production ready ones. And there is
nothing wrong with Vista, nor is MS forcing you to use any OS- In fact
they're getting no money from you using Vista right now.


-----It cost me 20 dollars for shipping and handling from a retailer.


2.> Secondly, you are obviously incapable of answering questions people have
repeatedly put to you, nor trying the RC. You had NOT disconnected the
drive fully, and you will not admit it for whatever strange reason/s you
have.

You have right to conclude anything u want.

3.> Thirdly, if you need help, this is NOT the place to bad-mouth Windows.
We're all enthusiasts (and you're really not convincing anyway).

-I m narrating a problem,thats all.Where is the question of badmouthing?By
the way Who decides who is the enthusiast?We all are in same boat.


4. "The problem is you. If you can't tell us exactly what you did to
cause this,
you won't get any help"

- For Ur information I have received help thru email from someone who has
solved my problem.



5.That too on a evaluation version as u cannot uninstall vista?

Formatting again is not the answer.....



I apologize if I have hurt someone directly or indirectly.Peace.....

 

[John Barnes]

With your Vista drive disconnected (and the other SATA drive disconnected if
it doesn't contain any critical files for your Media Center install) and the
Media Center drive connected (IDE drive), insert the Media Center CD in your
CD drive and start the computer. If it says 'press any key to boot from
CD', do NOT do anything and let it continue. What happens? What error
messages do you get or do you boot to Media Center.

then with no changes

The other thing I didn't ask is are you familiar with your BIOS. You need
to go into the setup and look for the boot priority section. There you have
the order to start the boot process. You need to have your CD ROM in first
position (probably there if you didn't change it after you installed Vista),
the hard disk in second. Go into the hard disk drives section and make the
IDE disk drive the first (top) in the list. Save and reboot (no CD in
drive). What happens? What error mesages do you get?

What brand is the computer or did you build it yourself. Did the computer
come with Media Center or did you install it later? If you installed it
later, we will have to find out where the Media Center boot files were
placed.

When you have completed the above items and answered the questions you
should either be able to boot into Media Center or we should have the
information necessary to do so. Thanks for your cooperation.

 

[thecreator]

Hi Sanjay,

When you had disconnected the XP Media centre, did you do so with the
Power off, after a complete Shutdown of Windows or just press the Power
Button and removed the Hard Drive? When you reinstalled XP Media centre did
you install it back exactly in the same position?

I am thinking that you had the Windows is shutting down and pulled the
Power Cord from the computer, before XP fully shutdown and corrupted the
information in the boot record, if Windows XP Media Centre is / was not
located on the C: Drive when it boots up.

You mentioned that you have 3 Hard Drives? Are all 3 attached to the
computer at the same time?