[saskia]

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TRYING VISTAPROBOOT!! SINCE XP NEVER EVEN INSTALLED PROPERLY..SO PLEASE READ AND OFFER ADVICE, ANYONE...THANK YOU

Hey there,

I'll try to summarize in a nutshell. I am by no means a computer expert so any responses please be in layman's terms
My laptop is a Sony Vaio VGN-CR320E/L

I followed instructions on shrinking my Vista partition. I shrunk the C drive and re-named the partition G.
I attempted to install XP Home Edition/SP 1. The partition G showed up in my list of partitions, I selected it and began the install.
The computer restarted and booted with XP Home Edition and attempted to complete & finalise it's installation when the computer froze while on the completing installation part.

So at this point, when I reboot my laptop it boots with XP Home Edition and attempts to complete an installation that will not complete and freeze the computer. With the Home Edition cd out of its drive it will prompt for the cd to complete installation.

I then attempted to put in a Windows XP Pro cd and got the option to boot from cd. On doing so, it loads the necessary files and then gives the option to install the cd. There was the option to create a partition in the unpartioned space however, the ONLY partition showing up is the C partition where I believe my Vista lies and did not choose to do this option. At another point I just tried to do it anyway but it did not work as I predicted because there were no unpartioned spaces showing anyway.

I then got another XP Home Edition cd, a new one, and got the option to boot from cd. At this point it asks if I'd like to repair the existing Windows Home Edition and shows only ONE partition again...This time it wasn't my G partition where I expected should be up for repair, but the drive was D. I still selected the drive for repair. It ran a repair, restarted the computer, booted with XP Home Edition and again tried to complete & finalise the installation where it popped up an lsass.exe error An invalid parameter was passed to a service or function.

So at this point my computer boots up in XP Home Edition and awaits the initial Home Edition SP1 cd. Otherwise any other installation cd it attempts to install but shows only my C partition or in the case of another Home Edition cd it brought up a D partition.

Please please please ...any advice? I would like to recover my Vista which I have no backup/recovery cd's since none came with the laptop and I never had set up any recovery options beforehand when Vista was working well. I would love to successfully attempt to have both Vista and XP Pro on my system however at this point I would simply be grateful if I can get back my Vista with all my files intact.

Please help soon...Thanks in advance

[Grav!ty]

I'm only going to be online for about half an hour right now otherwise I'll be back on later for longer, so how far we get now is going to depend on the speed of your responses.

Do you have access to a Vista DVD saskia?

[jbullard]

saskia,

As Graham stated to you have access to a Vista DVD? If so, then the best option to get Vista back online is top pop it in. When you get to the "Install" screen, down on the left corner you will see a "Repair" option. Click on this and then do a "Startup Repair". This will reinstall the Vista Bootloader so you can boot back into Vista.

Jason

[saskia]

Thank you to both of you..

I figured that would be the first step so I will be trying to get my hands on one as soon as I can. I do not own one presently as no such dvd came with my laptop. I will try the repair and post any problems if encountered.