Cant Boot into Vista

[.aero]

I have three partitions. One is the primary (with I dont know what on it) and its almost a gig in size. The second is logical with 130 gigs and vista on it.

The third is another logical partition with 50 gigs on it. I tried installing OS X 10.4.8 on the third partition but it didnt work out. So, I deleted everything on the drive and formatted it to MS-DOS. Now I can't even boot into Vista because it tells me "Reboot and Select proper Boot devise or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot devise and press a key." What are my options? Install a boot loader (without first booting into an OS), connect another hard drive to boot from and merge the two logical drives (without losing the Vista install), or load from the vista disk and merge the two from there (I don't know if this can happen). Any suggestions?

[Marcaen]

Try booting off your Vista DVD and have it scan for problems. It should find the Vista partition and rewrite the bootloader if it sees its not there.

[.aero]

Thanks Marcaen! I will try that.

 

Also, do you know of any boot loaders that can boot off of two logical partitions (like in my situation)?

[.aero]

Ok, so i booted off of the vista disk and am in system recovery options. It does not see my operating system so I have to click on "Load Drivers." This gives a window asking to "Insert the installation media for the device and click OK to select the driver" and I press OK. Now, it wants me to find a file with "System Information" that contains information about my hard drive. Where do I get that file from (where on the vista partition do I find it)?

[Mariussx]

Ok, so i booted off of the vista disk and am in system recovery options. It does not see my operating system so I have to click on "Load Drivers." This gives a window asking to "Insert the installation media for the device and click OK to select the driver" and I press OK. Now, it wants me to find a file with "System Information" that contains information about my hard drive. Where do I get that file from (where on the vista partition do I find it)?

You didn't have to choose Load drivers - it's only needed if your HD is not recognized. Your options now are:

1. Try to recover partition with special tools (like in Hiren's boot CD there are acronis disk director and more programs, which can be used to recover deleted partitions);

2. Clean install Vista.

 

Note: I don't know exactly, but how can you install OS on logical partition?... When installing OS, for eg. clean install of Vista you create a partition, which is Primary (not logical) and active. And when you install Mac, u need to create a new primary partition (not logical again).

[.aero]

You can choose to have what installed where. I didn't know that I was installing vista on a logical partition at the time, so I ended up installing it there.

 

I followed your advice (about not needing to load a driver) and it worked! Thanks so much Mariussx!

 

EDIT: Spoke too soon. Vista boots all wierd now. It goes through "Preparing Desktop" every time I boot up and after a while i get a blue screen with the mouse on it. Should I run the vista disk again to repair it?

[.aero]

I went through the install disk again and there is no boot problems that it can find. Is there anything else for me to try?

[AivarAnnamaa]

You could try bootsect.exe program

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/919529

 

"Use Bootsect.exe to restore the Windows Vista MBR and the boot code that transfers control to the Windows Boot Manager program. To do this, type the following command at a command prompt:

Drive:\boot\Bootsect.exe /NT60 All

In this command, Drive is the drive where the Windows Vista installation media is located.

Note The boot folder for this step is on the DVD drive."

 

NB! If you have several drives, then you can check if you can replace "All" with a drive identifier in the commandline above ... But maybe it's not necessary ...

[Mariussx]

egviper, here is my advice: boot Hiren's boot cd or any partitioning tool and delete that logical partition with Vista. Then from that unallocated space create a new primary NTFS partition. Try not to have C:\ partition before installing Vista, if the created partition doesn't have a letter assigned, after installing Vista on it, it will get C letter automaticaly (if there is no c partition) and Vista will boot and work correctly without errors.

 

Edit: btw, just recommendation: don't create partition for Vista too big - give for it for eg. 30GB or some more space and create a big partition for all your files to be separated from OS (80Gb or similar for movies, music, pictures, games, important info etc) and if you want to reinstall your OS due to MBR corruption or any other reason, you can delete just that small Vista partition and all your important files on big partition will be safe

[.aero]

Thanks to everyone who helped me out. In the end I just backed up my files and reinstalled vista (the right way this time) and am working on putting mac on a 37 gig harddrive right now. Again, thanks!

[Nesim TUNÇ]

Hi,

 

Here is how i did...

 

First, i boot with Acronis Disk Suite in safe mode.

 

2 - I set Vista installed partition as Active Partition

 

3- I boot from Vista DVD to repair startup

 

4- I tested Vista works

 

5- I boot from MAC OS X 10.5.7 DVD (fress F8 and then type cpus=1 -v -f)

 

6- I unchecked all property to install from customize window

 

7- I checked only Bootloader Chamellon v1 and go to installation ...

 

 

 

That worked for me ...

 

Thanks all.