Vista Boot Problem...

M

microsvc

I have previously asked a Q about my booting Vista issue, and now I have more
solid information on this issue. Hopefully I can get a resolution.

I noticed the BOOTMGR and BOOT folder on my slave drive and asked about
this. Well, yesterday this slave drive started failing, so I pulled it out,
installed a new 500gB drive and Vista stopped Booting, telling me either
BOOTMGR missing OR Boot Disk Failure. So I tried to do a repair with the
Vista DVD and after 2 hours of the "repair screen" attempting to repair, it
tells me that Vista cannot be repaired. In Disk Management, it shows me that
Drive C: is "Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Petition", yet this OS wont
boot from C or repair with only C: installed. (My slave drive now says
"System, active, primary partition") After I placed the failing drive back
in, Vista booted, and I had to format the 500gB drive in the secondary IDE
and then swap it out for the failing slave. I ran a repair and its now
booting, yet off my slave drive where BOOTMGR and the Boot folder is now
located. My BIOS is set to boot off C:..... HELP me get vista booting off of
C: again. Thx!
 
J

John Barnett MVP

How did the bootmgr get on the slave drive in the first place? As a
suggestion download the free application VistaBootPro and install it on your
Vista operating system. Once installed run it, it will tell you you haven't
created a backup, but forget that for the time being.

Once VisaBootPro has launched, Click on the System Bootloader tab. When the
window opens look at the section marked 'system bootloader options' Now
click on the radio button next to 'specific drive' then, from the drop down
menu, select the drive letter that your operating system is installed on,
presumably C: the click the 'Install Bootloader' button. Vistabootpro should
now install the necessary bootloader files onto your C: drive. When you next
boot up Vista should, hopefully, boot from the C: drive rather than you
slave drive.

Incidentally, when the bootloader has been installed, I suggest you remove
your failing slave drive to ensure that the bootloader files are, indeed,
loaded to the C: drive.

Good Luck
--
--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows - Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..
 
R

Rick Rogers

Hi,

You need to make C: active before running the repair. When you start the
system, it is the active volume that is first loaded, regardless of where
the OS files are. Use diskmgmt.msc to make C: active, then recheck the BIOS
hard drive boot order to ensure that it is loaded prior to any other drives.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
 
M

microsvc

Thanks for your suggestion. My C: is a RAID 1 system, with 2 SATA drives
using the VIA Raid system. I just made my C: active. Next boot, I will
disable the slave drive and try a repair on c: to see if it will now make it
bootable.

I'll also try to find VistaBootPro and install it.

More to come, THANKS!
~Bob
 

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