Vista RTM Install Trouble

[Bradley Plett]

Despite my lack of time, it is clear to me that I should have been
more involved in the beta. I've been running Vista in VM's for my
testing, since I can't afford to have trouble with my two main
machines. Well, when RTM came out, I thought the time had come to
move both of my main machines. I've spent all weekend at it, and have
nothing but misery to report.

I wanted to upgrade my laptop's XP, rather than start with a clean
install. Vista found some incompatibilities, so I removed those as
instructed. It then churned for several hours, and eventually game me
a message saying it couldn't continue (with virtually NO diagnostic
information) and rolled back to XP.

On my desktop, I wanted a clean install, with dual boot capability.
The problem is that I have two SATA disks installed in that machine. I
didn't THINK this was a particularly exotic configuration, but....
I've tried everything I've been able to think of, and couldn't get it
to happen. No matter what I did, after the install I got an error
saying "Windows failed to boot. Windows\System32\winload.exe is
corrupt or missing". I've lost track of the combinations and
permutations I've tried, including messing around with BCDEdit. About
the only thing I haven't tried (it's next on the list, if I ever get
the time to get back to this - no free weekends in the near future!)
is to remove my XP disk entirely, and use only the one, empty disk.

I made my living rolling out NT installs for large corporations for a
year or two. I really don't remember having this much grief with NT
ten years ago!

At this point I'm not sure if I want help or sympathy, but I thought
I'd let you know about my miserable weekend anyway.

Cheers!
Brad.

 

[Tom Lake]

On my desktop, I wanted a clean install, with dual boot capability.

The problem is that I have two SATA disks installed in that machine. I
didn't THINK this was a particularly exotic configuration, but....
I've tried everything I've been able to think of, and couldn't get it
to happen. No matter what I did, after the install I got an error
saying "Windows failed to boot. Windows\System32\winload.exe is
corrupt or missing".

The way I fixed that was to change the hard drive configuration in BIOS
from Auto to Large.

Tom Lake

 

[Bradley Plett]

It's a good thing I wasn't looking for help, because that, sadly,
didn't! ;-)

I've wiped out the laptop and done a clean install by now, but I would
still like to get my desktop running in a dual boot scenario.

Brad.

 

[John Barnes]

It is a little hard to help with out knowing your desktop setup. Basic
setup is that works well, is to have the Vista boot, ntldr, ntdetect.com and
boot.ini files all on the 'system' drive. Modify your boot.ini to point to
the XP system. Download and use VistaBootPro, and add a legacy drive (even
if 1 is present from the install) Personally, it makes further debugging
easier if you add a second entry to the boot.ini even if you don't have one
possibly pointing to the other drive number just in case the ARC path chosen
isn't correct, but letting you know that you have successfully transferred
control to the nt bootloader process. You should be able to get working
with this procedure, but it you run into problems post back more specifics
as to drives and partitions, how your disk system is laid out.

 

[Bradley Plett]

I only get occasional moments to work on this problem, but I've now
tried VistaBootPro and had no improvement. :-(

My disk situation is as follows:
Disk 0
- Primary, Active partition containing XP (C
- Extended partition containing:
- Two Logical drives (F: and J: under XP)
Disk 1
- Primary, Active partition on which I've installed Vista (D

I'm wondering if what's happening is that when Vista tries to boot, it
sees the three partitions on my "Disk 0" and assigns them consecutive
letters (maybe C:, D:, E, followed by the partition on "Disk 1"
(maybe F. Does that make sense? To me, this would explain it since
Vista would then be looking in the extended partition for its boot
information, which obviously wouldn't be there.

Even if that explanation is the reason, it gets me no closer to
getting Vista running on my machine. Any more thoughts or ideas?

Thanks!
Brad.

 

[John Barnes]

You don't say which is the 'system' drive. How did you install Vista, from
within XP or booting to the DVD?
Where specifically are the 4 files mentioned. Could you copy the entries on
the VistaBootPro store info overview in your next post.

With respect to the portable, in addition to removing listed items, make
sure any Antivirus and Firewalls are removed before attempting an upgrade.

 

[Bradley Plett]

Here is the VistaBootPro BCD Store Information Overview:

There is currently 3 OS(s) installed in the boot manager.
Current timeout before default boots: 3
Default OS: Microsoft Windows Vista

Entry # 1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Earlier Version of Windows
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Boot Drive: C:
Windows Drive:
System Bootloader: \ntldr
Windows Directory:

Entry # 2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
BCD ID: {default}
Boot Drive: D:
Windows Drive: D:
System Bootloader: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry # 3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Windows (TM) Code Name "Longhorn"
Preinstallation Environment (recovered)
BCD ID: {12d192f2-787d-11db-9217-85c08696cfac}
Boot Drive: C:
Windows Drive: C:
System Bootloader: \$WINDOWS.~BT\Windows\system32\boot\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \$WINDOWS.~BT\Windows

I've tried both installing from within XP and also by booting from the
DVD. I get the same results both ways.

Hope that helps.
Brad.

 

[Bradley Plett]

P.S. My "system" drive is "C:". The four files you mention are in
the root of "C:\", as follows:
11/22/2006 01:43 AM <DIR> Boot
11/22/2006 01:43 AM 355 boot.ini
11/02/2006 02:53 AM 438,840 bootmgr
09/03/2004 12:46 AM 250,032 ntldr
09/03/2004 12:46 AM 47,564 NTDETECT.COM
(I'm not quite sure what you meant by "Vista boot", but...

Thanks again!
Brad.

 

[Mike Lewis \(MS\)]

There is an unfinished installation on your #3 partition (not sure if that
is drive 1 or not, guessing it is.

One think I have done to simplify multiple drive and OS situations. I
create a small "system" partition. It is a 2GB active partition on Drive 0.
You might make Drive 1 partition unactive (I do not recall having to do this
but just in case I call it out here). You can use diskpart shrink cmd (set
the size) and create part pri, and then active and assign. Then when
installing Vista, run setup, choose the Drive 1 partition (not the small
active partiton). Setup will put Vista on the Drive 1 partition and place
the bootmgr and bcd on the 2GB partition and also create entries (or later
allow you to manipulate with less risk).

The other thing you might be having trouble with is the proper SATA drivers.
IT wil work fine until Vista reboots into the WinPE on the hard disk, then
the lack of drivers can cause things like "cannot find winload". In setup
you can add the drivers. I customize my WinPE 2.0 (hint: Use the BDD 2007
Workbench) with all my drivers and setup will automatcially reflect those
into teh OS at install time also. BDD does not suport multiple partition
setups yet, so just use it to create a generic custom Winpe ISO. You can
run PEImage.exe to add drivers also, or like said above, add them in the
setup screens.

With Vista bootmgr on the active partition will process the list. Using
Vista diskpart/setup/format wil place a nt60 boot sector on the drive, and
it will look for a bootmgr if found which then loads winload if found. If
bootmgr is not found, then it falls back to ntldr. If you want ot set
things back close to "normal" you can use bootsect /nt52 from the WInPE2.0
cmd line ont eh XP partition, and make sure it is set active. It should
boot back to XP again. having a WInpE disk is handy at this point. YOU
could also doa shift F10 in the Vista boot DVD when you started setup to get
a cmd line and do these cmds.

 

[John Barnes]

Did you get Vista completely installed? How many times did your system
reboot during the install? Can you also look at the Vista drive and see if
the missing file is there. Did you change the default boot time as normally
after a complete install it is set to 30 seconds. If all seems to have
completed, using the Vista DVD, start thru the install process and when you
have the option to do a fix or repair of the startup process, do it. If you
do not get that offered before you have to select where to put the install,
your install didn't complete.