[turbowomble]

Hi folks, first time poster, hope you can help me.

Trying to fix a laptop for somebody and I downloaded VistaBootPro hoping it could help me with a little problem that was occuring on bootup. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I think I must have accidently clicked the option in VistaBootPro to uninstall the Vista bootloader and load the legacy bootloader instead. Now when I try to boot the laptop I get the message "NTLDR is missing - press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart". I can't get into Vista at all now in order to change the bootloader back to the Vista bootloader.

To make matters worse, this particular laptop is an Advent from PC World here in Ireland which has no Vista or recovery disks whatsoever. It's all pre-installed and the software PC World install to repair/recover/reinstall is now in-accessable as well because the laptop won't boot any further beyond the NTLDR error message. Plus, I don't have access to any Vista disk that I might use to help sort this issue out.

Am I totally screwed or is there some other way I can get into Vista in order to load VistaBootPro and switch back to the Vista bootloader?

Any advice or help would be very much appreciated as I'm desperate here. Thanks everybody!

[yeshuas]

Try hitting or holding down F12 on bootup and see if you get any kind of menu e.g. restore or other boot options

[turbowomble]

Tried that, pressing F12, I get the menu to boot from either the DVD/CD drive or the hard drive. When I try booting from the hard drive, I still get the error.

Basically, as far as I can tell, as I said earlier I need to somehow re-enable booting from the Vista bootloader instead of the legacy bootloader again. However, without being able to get past this error message so I can get into Vista and, therefore, back into VistaBootPro, I can't do this. Unless, of course, one of you guys can think of some other way to do it! Come on, folks, I'm counting on you!

[yeshuas]

Ok with your computer try hitting or holding F10

Your Advent computer uses the latest recovery system that doesn't require any CDs or DVDs to restore your PC to it's original factory condition.

There are two ways to start the recovery -
Restart your computer. Then Press F10 repeatedly until the message "Starting System Recovery" is displayed.
In Windows by clicking: Start / All Programs / System Recovery / System Recovery.

The recovery will load and display a box with one option:
Non-destructive recovery: this option will restore Windows, supplied applications, and drivers. This option will not destroy your documents or programs. These will be backed up along with the registry. These are restored at the end of the recovery process.

To access the recovery options below that erase all data from the computer, click the Advanced button.

System Recovery - No format: this will reinstall Windows, supplied applications and drivers. It will move your files to a folder called "My old disk structure". Any applications (except those supplied) will need to be reinstalled.

System Recovery - Quick format: this option will erase your hard drive including your personal files. Windows, supplied applications and drivers will be reinstalled.

Select the Non-destructive recovery option and press Next.
You will be informed about System Restore in Windows, click Yes.
The recovery will begin. Once this is complete click Restart.

[yeshuas]

here some other info on your computer

From version 2.x of the recovery system onwards you can install applications from the c:\applications folder. Drivers can be installed from the c:\applications\drivers folder and utilities from the c:\applications\tools folder. You will still need to install Microsoft Works from the supplied CD.