[scream]

Hi everyone

Recently I've been dual booting Vista and XP with no problems at all, my PC came with Vista installed and I used my hold harddrive which already had XP installed and confgured the boot with VistaBootPro (I might have got that name wrong).
It work fine for weeks, untill the other night XP was bringing up the error "NTLDR is missing". I had to get onto my XP partition that night, so I just popped in the XP cd and repaired it.
The next day, I tried to get onto Vista and it give me the error "NTLDR is missing".
So I logged onto my XP and started Google-ing for answers, and noticed that my hard drive with Vista installed isn't showing. But the tiny bit of partition that has been left (About 10mb) is showing as a hard drive, but it hasnt been formatted!
Anyway, I found some andswers as I was Google-ing, many saying just use the startup repair on the Vista CD, so I thought I'd try that first, and what a surprise my Vista partition wasnt showing in the repair, but it was showing in the installation!
I also tried just using the command panel on the cd, that also didn't work. Also, does anyone know why that command panel doesnt have any help options? Stupid eh.

Today I ran "bootsect" off the Vista CD, as I was curious as to what it does, now when I try to boot into Vista it says "BOOTMGR is missing".

So, anyone know how I can fix this?
Thanks

[Elvandil]

Can you run Startup Repair again in Vista? Then try VistabootPro
or
EasyBCD (from either Vista or XP)
to edit Vista's boot store. And use Disk Management to be sure that the Vista partition is active.

[scream]

Cant login to Vista at all
Cant even see my Vista hard drive unless Im in the Vista installation menu.

I've downloaded and installed EasyBCD, but again the problem is it cant find the Vista hard drive.

[Elvandil]

The Vista partition will need to be Active for those apps to find it. If you can't do that in XP's Disk Management, you will need a third-party partitioner, or use fdisk from a Win98 Boot Floppy.

It's hard to say what the rsults of your curiosity may be. You may need to reinstall Vista.

[scream]

Im hoping, now, just to be able to get a couple of gigabites of files off it it. Then to format and reinstall.

Any ideas and how I could get access to my hard drive?

Could you give me anymore information on using a third party partitioner?

Thanks.

[Elvandil]

Go back to XP's Disk Management and see what it says about the drive. There are a lot of good partitioners around, and even boot managers, but if the file system on that drive is corrupt, they will only make things worse.

Let us know what Disk Management says at this point.

You could try booting into Vista, and it is no doubt at least worth a try. I have tested this boot disk on Vista and it boots both through the MBR and without the MBR:

SGD Boot Disk - This zip file contains both CD and floppy images. This boot disk can hide and unhide partitions, activate partitions, boot Windows or any other OS whether there is an MBR present or not, boot from a second drive, restore Windows boot (equivalent to fdisk /mbr or fixmbr), add or remove GRUB, restore LILO, live-swap drives and more.

[scream]

Well XP's disk managment tells me that my hard drive with Vista installed is 10MB, when it should be around 250GB.
Vista installation, when ran booting from the CD, gives me the option of deleting the 249GB space and shows me the 10MB space.

Im going to give the SGD Boot Disk a try now.

[scream]

SGD Boot Disk didn't help
I tried booting through it, tried hiding my XP partition and booting into Vista.
Also tried using it to fix the Vista boot but it didn't help.

Is there perhaps a programme you can think of that I can use to get access of my hard drive to retreive some data, then I think I'll just reinstall Vista.

Thanks again

[Elvandil]

There's something very peculiar going on here. It may be because you installed Vista without the XP drive being connected and since the drive letters overlap, Vista is hidden from XP. But if you couldn't even boot with the SGD, I'm beginning to wonder if the Vista partition isn't damaged or even absent altogether.

Can you remove the XP drive and then run Vista Startup Repair to see if you can get into Vista without any interference?

If that works, then recover your data and put the XP drive back in before installing Vista to the other drive so that Vista can detect XP and set up the boot menu.

[scream]

I have tried removing the XP hard drive and booting normally, also have tried booting from the CD but still no such luck.

I never really noticed whether on XP I could see the Vista hard drive, I never really needed too.
But I did transfer a few things from Vista to the XP hard drive, with no problems. The XP hard drive was label D:/. But on XP it is labeled C:/.

If I change the XP hard drive letter do you think that could help?
Im wondering whether if I change it and re-boot into XP I might be able to see my Vista hard drive?



Edit: This is a screen shot of the Disk Manager window
I changed the drive letter of the Vista hard drive so programs on my XP would still work






BTW I only just pluged in my back up hard drive, its a USB hard drive. Just thought I'd make note that it wasn't plugged in before



Just thought I'd include a screenshot of My Computer, so you can see XP saying that my Vista hard drive is 10MB, but it clearly says I have 232GB in the Disk Manager?

[scream]

Also, I just looked in the 10MB space and there was a file called SrtTrail.txt
I googled the file name and it said that this is a sort of log for when Vista tries to boot and fails.

There are two of these files
The 7MB says:

 E x t e r n a l M e d i 

ØM¤K1È
xs.¤K1È
\ D e v i c e \ H a r d d i s k 0

C :\ 

C h e c k   f o r   u p d a t e s  

S y s t e m   d i s k   t e s t 

D i s k   f a i l u r e   d i a g n o s i s 

m e t a d a t a   t e s t

C : \ b o o t m g r

The 2MB one says:

Startup Repair diagnosis and repair log
---------------------------
Number of repair attempts: 1

Session details
---------------------------
System Disk = \Device\Harddisk0
Windows directory = 
AutoChk Run = 0
Number of root causes = 1

Test Performed: 
---------------------------
Name: Check for updates
Result: Completed successfully. Error code =  0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed: 
---------------------------
Name: System disk test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code =  0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed: 
---------------------------
Name: Disk failure diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code =  0x0
Time taken = 187 ms

Test Performed: 
---------------------------
Name: Disk metadata test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code =  0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Root cause found: 
---------------------------
Boot manager is missing or corrupt.

Repair action: File repair
Result: Failed. Error code =  0x15
Time taken = 0 ms

---------------------------
---------------------------

It doesn't say exactly that, simpley because I've cut out all the spaces that would make it drag horizontally across the forum.


Do you think I should take the leap of changing my Vista hard drive to C: and seeing if it makes any difference? Because from reading what was in the SrtTrail.txt that seems to be what the problem is.
But If I change the drive name, what affect will that have on XP?

[Elvandil]

Change the Vista drive from where? If you do it in XP, that's fine. It is only what XP calls it. But if you change it in Vista, the installation will be destroyed because nothing on the partition will be able to find anything else.

[jadeonpax]

My friend, i do have a dual boot laptop also with vista in it pre installed and xp after that. Usually if xp is pre installed all you have to do is set up your xp to another drive or partition. After the xp installation i'm sure you'll never be able to boot up to your vista you won't even see the boot up menu, it will automatically to XP. The reason is XP will change or somewhat modify the boot config of the pc but to solve that problem, Just install EasyBCD and repair your Vista Boot Menu then copy boot.ini, NTLDR and NTDETECT.com to your vista partition and wa la!!!!!restart you pc and youll see your vista and xp boot menu.

Note: U can use this vice versa, either XP or Vista is pre-installed but you'll just have to reverse the process..If XP is first, XP will not boot up so copy bootmgr, boot.ini, NTDETECT and NTLDR from vista...

Hope it help...

[jadeonpax]

Originally Posted by jadeonpax

My friend, i do have a dual boot laptop also with vista in it pre installed and xp after that. Usually if xp is pre installed all you have to do is set up your xp to another drive or partition.

My friend i mistyped that line, this is what it should say:

"My friend, i do have a dual boot laptop also with vista in it pre installed and xp after that. Usually if VISTA is pre installed all you have to do is set up your xp to another drive or partition."

Thanks...

[Elvandil]

You should perform some drive tests on that Vista drive. It looks like drive failure.

Free Hard Drive Testing Applications:
HD Tune
HDAT2 (Diagnostics and bad sector recovery)
MHDD Low-level Diagnostics
Bootable Hitachi Drive Fitness Test Floppy or CD Image (works on most drives)

Hard Drive Manufacturers' Diagnostic Utilities Links:
TachTech
BleepingComputer