Le Master Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 This is a major problem as I now can't boot into any operating system on my computer. Background: Windows Vista was the only operating system on my computer. I had Acronis Disk Director Suite 2.0 installed but I was having trouble with it so I used Windows Disk Management to create a new Fat32 primary partition so I could install OS 10.4.8. That worked just fine and then I surfed around the internet for a while and what not. Ensuing that I installed the Acronis Boot Manager so I could boot into either OS following my OS X installation. Well for those of you who know, installing the Acronis boot Manager (ABM) requires a restart. As of then, everything was running according to plan. Well the computer restarted and it went right into the ABM like it was supposed to. ABM asks you which hard drive you want to boot into, well my Windows Vista disk was missing! The only disk available was the newly created partition I made for OS X. So I figured ABM was just conflicting with the Windows Boot Manager so I disabled the ABM so it would revert back to it. I was wrong. For those of you with Vista, you know that the installation DVD comes with that nifty Recovery Environment that helps with pretty much any startup issue. Well one of the steps prior to entering the Recovery Environment is to select your operating system from a little list. Vista is supposed to be in that list but it's missing! I skipped that step and entered the Recovery Environment anyway where I was able to use tools to graphically browse my computer's hard drives and see what was going down. I was able to browse to my Windows Vista drive (C:) and everything is still there! However, cmd prompt doesn't recognize any c: drive on the computer. Any idea of what the heck is going on? I really really just need to get back into Windows. I'm not a moron so I will be able to answer any questions thoroughly that will assist you in helping me. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/44494-missing-operating-system/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
cionide Posted March 8, 2007 Share Posted March 8, 2007 try downloading fdisk then boot up with that then set the active drive to your windows drive. I have found the easiest way to dual boot it too install vista creat a new partition thats id is set to af using disk manager in windows then install easybcd after that copy the chain0 file from your mac cd to your windows drive then boot up with the mac dvd and install mac on your partition then after restart you will reseve an error so you just use fdisk to set the active partition to your windows drive after that youll boot up into windows then make then menu in easy bcd Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/44494-missing-operating-system/#findComment-318892 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le Master Posted March 8, 2007 Author Share Posted March 8, 2007 Hmm, that sounds too easy, I'll give it a shot, thanks a lot! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/44494-missing-operating-system/#findComment-319279 Share on other sites More sharing options...
edstrang Posted March 8, 2007 Share Posted March 8, 2007 what you need to do is to run the windows vista repair, then tell it to do a startup repair. this worked for me when i got this error. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/44494-missing-operating-system/#findComment-319388 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le Master Posted March 8, 2007 Author Share Posted March 8, 2007 edstrang, as I mentioned in my initial post, the Vista Recovery Environment was unable to detect that I even had Vista installed on any hard disk, so the Startup Repair feature wouldn't work for me. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/44494-missing-operating-system/#findComment-319459 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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