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Corrupt boot sector? Y? HowTo fix? Vista Ultimate weird situation


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raylopez99 raylopez99 is offline
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23-Nov-2007, 08:09 PM #1
Red face Corrupt boot sector? Y? HowTo fix? Vista Ultimate weird situation
System in question: Core 2 Duo, ConRoe 1333-D667 Mobo, 2 GB PC 667 RAM, one 233 SATAII HD. OS that will not boot up into the HD (but installs): Vista Ultimate

I need some encouragement along the lines of "seen that", rather than specific advice.

Vista Ultimate OS seems to load and install (i.e. I can tell using various CD-ROM utilities that it seems to be sitting on the NTFS formated HD) but the system, once past the POST stage, won't boot into the HD but hangs (though it does work off the CD/DVD). Tried playing with various boot sequences, but nothing seems to work.

Installing Vista: when Vista gets to the menu window: Copy Windows | Expand files | Install feature | Complete Install | and then reboot (after 10 seconds countdown) the system hangs after POST (blinking underscore cursor). You can only boot into the CD-ROM (with a bootable CD). Tried reformatting (using Acronis Disc manager CD) and stripping down the system to no add-on graphics card (using the system graphics port only) and no other cards, and still I get the same problem.

Bought the above hardware very very cheap (Asia)--about 20% of the US price. The seller managed to make it work, using a legal copy of Windows Vista Ultimate. But he had problems doing so. I am pretty experienced (about a half dozen systems built from scratch), so I figured no problem. But the first hint of a problem was when trying to load Windows 2000 from the reformatted (clean) HD--won't work (supposed "invalid key" problem, not true). Then Windows XP, using legal copies of the same, the same message "Invalid Key" (or along those lines). But the keys are not invalid. So something on the boot sector of the HD is corrupt I surmise.

Checked for viruses on the CD--but none. However, here is a possibility: the Windows Ultimate DVD was a pirate version, and often these have viruses (relax, I intend to register with Microsoft, as I've done in the past--the pirate DVD was simply to get the ball rolling rather than download or wait for a legal copy). Though this pirate DVD passed all antivirus tests by Kaspersky and others, there's a chance that an encrypted virus was on the disk that was decrypted/unpacked during installation and now sits on my boot sector, and somehow survives reformatting by the Acronis utility (also I've been warm rebooting most of the time, which doesn't help). However, to be frank, I doubt this is the reason. All contrary opinions welcome.

Crappy MoBo BIOS settings might be the reason--but I did set the defaults, set everything as plain as I could, and still no response. However, system does work from the CD. Weird--anybody seen this before?

Question: I just want to load an OS on this system--not Vista necessarily. I'll even settle for Linux (I tried Linux Mandriva just now, but the CD-ROM was not bootable--can anybody point me to a .ISO format image file of a bootable Linux OS for a clean system like mine?)

Really what I'm looking for in this post is a reply by an experienced installer who says: "been there, done that, it could be X,Y,Z...and good luck". Morale support more than anything.

I'm going to bed now...four hours of battling this problem is enough for one day. Luckily this system I'm going to give to a friend and it's not needed to do my work, otherwise I'd be going frantic!

Thanks,

RL
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raylopez99 raylopez99 is offline
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24-Nov-2007, 04:23 PM #2
Turns out this was a complicated problem caused by SATA drives not being recognized by Windows. A long fix would be to get drivers and play around during installation of Vista (not Win98 or Win2k, since they want drives to fit on a floppy, which this system didn't have). A short fix, which I opted for and it worked, was to swap the SATA drive for an older EIDE drive, which was in theory slower but in practice about the same. With an EIDE drive the mobo and processor worked fine and the OS (Vista), finally recognized the HD after a lot of effort, reformatting, etc. Took two days.
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24-Nov-2007, 04:27 PM #3
One thing I have been able to do, is if you get the SATA drivers on the HD, even if it is XP, Vista will recognize the drive later during a fresh install.
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raylopez99 raylopez99 is offline
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24-Nov-2007, 04:36 PM #4
Thanks LoserOLimbs!
Thanks for that tip. I'll keep it in mind. Right now I'm going to add a second SATA drive as a non-primary (non-boot, D:, drive) and I doubt I'll have problems, but I'll keep your tip in mind if I decide to build another system with all SATA drives. Also I'll get a better mobo-this one by ASRock ConRoe1333-D667 v. 3 was just a bit too cheap, though I understand this problem is common with all SATA drives and WIndows.

RL
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24-Nov-2007, 05:13 PM #5
The problem is only that you need drivers for that SATA controller on the floppy to copy them to the right sector of the drive so that Windows can see them. After that its not bad!
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