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Vista won't boot without DVD, again.

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Vista won't boot without DVD, again.

Postby mhonzell » Sat Mar 03, 2007 10:25 pm

I have installed the various versions of Vista on 56 various computers. On eight of those computers I have run into, and solved, this nasty boot problem. My solution is poorly contrived in that it requires removing 2nd, 3rd, etc. HD during installation and then reconnecting upon completion. (See below and posts on "Vista won't boot without DVD")

The problem concerns computers with the following configuration/condition:
1. A computer with multiple hard drives (any mix of S-ATA or PATA it turns out)
2. Any of the 2nd, or higher, drives has been setup as having a logical partition/partitions
3. The user installs Vista by booting from the DVD

When a drive is setup with a logical partition, 8 meg of unallocated space is reserved at the beginning of the drive.

The Vista installer, it appears, will start installing boot code to the unallocated space on a 2nd, 3rd or 4th drive. I have used a hex editor and have found this code there. This 8 meg of unallocated space is quickly filled and the installer places the remainder of the code on the disk chosen by the user for the Vista install.

The Vista install completes and the user removes the DVD. Upon startup, the user finds that Vista will not boot. Vista is looking for the boot code on the drive where the user had chosen to install Vista (system partition). It is not there. Part of it resides on another drive where it is not recognized.

If the user puts the DVD into the drive tray, Vista boots fine. Startup takes the code from the DVD.

This should not occur, but it is too late to change the code on the Vista DVD's at this point. The work around is to physically disconnect any drive that you do not want the Vista installer to touch. In this way, all of the code is written to the desired drive/partition.

Upon arriving at the Windows desktop, go to system management | Disk Management and change the drive letters for your CD drive, DVD drive, USB drives, card readers etc. to the end of the alphabet. This gets them out of the way prior to you shutting down the computer and reconnecting your other drives.

Now, shut down your computer and reconnect your drives. Upon booting to the desktop, you will see that the new drives are recognized and initialized. You will also see that the drive letters are in sequence, and not broken up by the various other drives (you previously moved them). You may be asked to reboot so the changes can be made permanent. Do so if directed.

The next time you boot to the desktop you can rearrange those re-lettered drives if you so desire.

Now, I am not certain how pervasive this problem is but I have seen it on old/new motherboards from 3 major M/B manufacturers. It is not, of course, going to affect those who purchase a new computer with Vista on it. It "will" affect those who upgrade or build their own computers, as these are the users who are more likely to have multiple drives installed in their
machines.
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Postby kd1966 » Sun Mar 04, 2007 12:16 am

Yes, we've definately seen a bit of this problem here.......... one of the reasons we like to get an accurate description of how the user installed Vista and an explanation of their disk mgmt console
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Postby NT50 » Sun Mar 04, 2007 3:51 am

Each system has some differences. Due to this each one needs to be fixed on its on.
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Postby JabbaPapa » Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:37 am

That's a nice detailed analysis of this behaviour, and thanks for shedding some light on the actual processes behind the issue :notworthy

It is also worth noting that in rare cases, the presence of logical drives may unusualy lead to the Vista pre-boot environment giving different partition numbers to various partitions than pre-boot on a pure NT/XP system, which can be a variant cause for poor boot behaviour, where multi-boot is desired :yesnod:
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