Can't Boot XP or Vista - (Dropped) - Reformat

by **marcbev** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:22 am

Please Help. My copy of Vista is due to arrive Monday. I backed up my files and decided to do a rebuild of both my C: drive which had Xp installed (it is a Raid 0 array with two 160 gig hds appearing as one 320 hd. The other hd is a 160 gig and had Vista build 7544 on it. I used nlite and built a slipstream version of xp Here is where the Hell began, there was an error on the slipstream cd windows wanted to reboot and when it did I came to the boot screen with choices of xp, Vista or windows setup. I chose windows setup. Received the same error message and I got in a vivious loop. Neither the old windows xp nor Vista would boot from the boot screen. One little mistake and it seems like it screwed my entire computer. I found an old emergency startup disk and tried to boot with it, reformat the drive and start fresh. Somehow, after screwing with this all day I have partitions all over the place and no operating systems. My raid array appears to be screwed up along with everything else. There has got to be a simple way to just get rid of what ever I have done to the hard drives and wipe everything off and start fresh. I obviously don't have a clue and I was hoping one of you techies could get me straight. To top it off, I am sitting on my wife's computer and it doesn't have a floppy drive so I can't even go online and find an XP emergency startup disk to download.
Are there a few steps, folowed in order, to get me back to where I have 2 clean hard drives?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Marc

by **NT50** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:30 am

Boot to the Vista DVD and wipe everything out completely with a custom install. You will be able to select the drive and wipe the partitions out and create new one using the custom install.

by **marcbev** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:44 am

For some reason, whatever I have done, has caused my raid controller drivers needed by Vista to not load...they always have before, but not now. Installation stops right there so I can'r wipe anything out.One error messgae I have received is ntldr is missing, please restart.
Thanks,
Marc

by **NT50** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:50 am

ntldr is not Vista.......

That is XP

by **marcbev** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 3:07 am

I know ntldr is xp, I am having problems all over the place, that is just one I could remember off the top of my head. Nothing is working Vista, Xp, the newly installed XP, which I thought I was replacing when I installed the slipstream XP this AM
Marc

by **NT50** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 7:23 pm

What is the status of this? Did you get your Vista DVD? Are you running?

by **marcbev** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 11:35 am

I am in the process of taking care of the problem. I downloaded one of those emergency hard disk rescue type programs and I totally wiped the Vista drive and, as we speak, the xp drive is being wiped. What happened, I think, is the Vista booting file became corrupted, rendering both Vista and XP unbootable. With install disks from both Vista and XP, I was unable to get in to the repair operating system mode, I couldn't boot the computer at all. I am sure there was a better way to handle this, but no one here seemed to be able to offer any suggestions, maybe because I didn't explain the problem well enough. I might make a suggestion...do one of those sticky posts at the top providing a few steps people could try when this happens. If it happened to me, it will happed to others and one corrupted boot file basically renedered my dual boot computer useless.

I learned my lesson the hard way. What protection steps should be taken, besides backing up, which I do, so I lost virtually no important files, just lots of time.Is there a set of boot floppies you can make for Vista, to use in case of emergency. The guys doing Vista Boot Pro could maybe come up with an emergency floppy that could repair the boot files for Vista and XP when one becomes corrupted.

by **NT50** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 4:39 pm

I will point our programmer here toward this post and your suggestions. Sorry you could not get it rebooting. Once you get it going properly, use the VistaBootPro to do its backup and then copy the backup to floppy or external disk somewhere.

Anyway I will mark this as "Dropped" for now. If you want to open it back up just post here and let me know.

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Can't Boot XP or Vista - (Dropped) - Reformat

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