Vista RTM Install Issue

[Guest]

Alright, this is kind of a lengthy issue but I'm trying to give as much
background as possible to my problem.

I had Vista RC1 installed on a second partition on the same drive (raid 0, 2
300Gb maxtors on a NVRAID chipset) as a XP install, the RC1 worked fine for
me and I enjoyed playing with it.

I installed Vista RTM which was given to me to test some features of my DX10
video card and I wasn't paying attention to it very well and I clicked past
the key portion and it went to the 30 day trial until activation, I had also
selected the wrong version of windows for the install.

I then attempted to reinstall Vista RTM to use the Ultimate version and this
process was simply not happening. It goes through everything until it
attempts to update the boot process, in which case this fails stating that it
was unable to update the boot sector.

Now with my problem outlined I have tried the following things:

Attempting to use installation repair to correct the boot sector, failed.
Resetting the bootsector with bootsect on the DVD to nt52, failed.
Tried the registry fix that had been posted, I didn't have a backup listed,
failed.
Attempted updating the group policies on my boot sector, failed.
Full formatted the partition I installed vista on, no effect.
Attempted to set the /boot directory to fill access and ownership to
adminstrator, failed.
Used the XP disk to reset the master boot record, failed.

I've tried everything I can at this point but I just can't reinstall. Any
help someone could give me would be greatly appreciative. This is getting
really annoying and I can't seem to find a good solution for it.

Thanks in Advance

 

[Gary J. Dikkema]

There are NO PIDS yet for the RTM...

You've done the install right by running the 30 trial mode.

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Do you mean Product Key?
If so you are mistaken since myself and many others have used our keys to
install and activate RTM Windows Vista.
And then of course I can see my Product ID.

 

[Guest]

I did the reinstall because I picked the wrong version, and I do have a
valid key. My issue lies directly with the boot sector being unwritable by
the install now, the key is really a non issue.

I've tried everything to fix the boot problem with no avail.

 

[Guest]

Check your bios to ensure that virus protection is turned off. This will
prevent a boot sector from being written if it is turned on.

 

[Guest]

I have checked this as well, sadly there was no such option in my bios.

Any other suggestions out there?

 

[Gary J. Dikkema]

You're right. This is the public forum. Enough said.

 

[Pete]

How did you re-format your partition?

You can use Win PE 2.0 (I've not got much time to explain how to use it)
You can create a bootable CD of Win PE 2.0, which boots into a Live Vista
install with a command prompt which lets you run quite a number of tools
including formatting through command promt.

Pete

 

[Guest]

Vista would not boot for me anymore and I couldn't figure out why, so I
decided to format the partition it was installed on. After I did that, I
could not access the BCD (boot configuration data). XP can not access it
since it uses bootini. When I tried to reinstall Vista, since the BCD can
not be formatted with the partition, it detected that Vista was already
installed eventhough it wasn't.

So here's how I fixed it:
Vista 32 bit and 64 bit editions, are of course, different versions. So,
since my 64 bit edition crashed on one of my machines, and I couldn't
reinstall because of the BCD, I took the hard drive from one of my other
machines, that has Vista 32 bit edition on it, and connected it to my 64 bit
machine. With both hard drives connected, I tried to boot Vista. Since 32
bit edition BCD was not on the hard drive that I had Vista 64 bit, it
detected it as corrupted. I selected the recover option that then popped up
and it changed the BCD to work with the 32 bit Vista. I then disconnected
the drive that had Vista 32 installed. Now with the BCD changed to Vista 32
bit, it then allowed me to install Vista 64 bit, as the 64 bit BCD no longer
exsisted on that hard drive.