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[Mofohead Profile]

Hello all. I'm obviously new here but this definitely seemed like the place for this question. I have been up and running on Vista Ultimate since Microsoft shipped MSDN copies to customers. It's been running great and I love it....or loved it until now. This past weekend my power supply died and needed replaced. No problem, I got a new one and swapped it out. That was easy and my system was up and running again. Here is where the problems started......

I have two 36GB raptors striped off of my onboard SATA controller and that is what I run my OS on. I'm using one of my IDE channels for my DVD and DVD burner but the other IDE channel was left open. Well, I've been hurting for drive space and had an extra 20GB laying around so I thought "what the heck, while the machine is pulled apart for the power supply install, why not throw in that 20GB drive as well"....so I did. My system booted fine and I went into disk management and deleted the 20GB partition, recreated it and formated it. When format was complete, it showed as an active primary partition. I wasn't sure if that was going to cause any problems so I rebooted my machine to see what would happen. Well, the previous boot was the last successful boot i got. I kept getting an error saying that the vista boot manager was hosed and it was missing BCD files needed to boot. I tried numerous things but with limited knowledge of the vista boot manager AND very good backups, I decided i would simply reload my OS and start from scratch.

At first when I booted to the Vista dvd it picked up my 100GB USB drive, and the 20GB backup drive but of course I had to load drivers for my SATA controller. Once those drivers were loaded, I noticed that my recently added 20GB showed "disk 0 partition 1" and my SATA drives intended for the OS showed "disk4 partition 1". Setup continued to copy and extract files but when the system rebooted, it gave me the same vista boot error as before "BCD files missing" and can't boot. I shut the machine down and disconnected the 20GB drive and my 100GB USB drive to eliminate them all together with. Attempted my second Vista install. Again it did not recognize my array so I loaded SATA drivers but this time the drive came up as "disk 5 partition 1"...copied files and extracted then rebooted and failed again with same boot error. So i tried a few more times with same results, however, the system some how continues to enumerate the drives once drivers are loaded and the array is recognized:

disk 6 partition 1
disk 7 partition 1
ect, ect, ect....

So last resort (so I thought) I booted into the array configuration utility and broke the stripe, performed a low level format on both drives individually, recreated the stripe, booted to Vista dvd, loaded drivers and guess what???? You got it, "disk 9 partition 1"!!!!!! I couldn't believe it. Where the heck is this information being stored?!?!?!?!

At this point I attempted to reload XP. I loaded SATA drivers, deleted the partition, recreated the partition, formated with NTFS, and started the install. Sure enough on the first reboot it comes back with the SAME VISTA BOOT ERROR! UGGGG!!!

So the next to the last resort....(so I thought) I put norton's gdisk on a floppy, booted to the Vista disk, chose repair, got to the command prompt, ran gdisk /mbr /wipe and it said the task complete successfully...guess what? Of course, the exact same results.

So now the final attempt at what I had in my arsenal, I resorted to the good old fashioned fdisk on my 98 boot floppy. I ran fdisk to delete the existing partition, recreated it, set the partition as active and rebooted......HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!!!!

"disk 0 partition 1"

IT WORKED!!!!!....so I thought. I attempted to load Vista again and sure enough after it copies files, extracts files and reboots...the same Vista BDC boot error again. At this point I have 4 days into this repair and I'm about ready to put my Vista disk in the garbage disposal.

Would some please tell me that VistaBootPRO will fix my problems???? Or tell me what I'm missing? Or tell me where the top secret boot record location is....it's hiding somewhere inside my computer. Will VistaBootPRO work from the command prompt? I obviously don't have an OS to boot to so I can't "install" anything.

[NT50 Profile]

Disconnect all drive except you two RAID drives. Eliminate your RAID 0. Recreate you RAID 0. Use the Vista DVD and follow the instructions here on using Vista commands to clean the MBR Go into BIOS and set boot sequence.

You have knowledge of what to do from here. Please let us know what happens..............

[Mofohead Profile]

I simply want to get Vista reloaded on my machine. I don't want to do anything with the 20GB drive because it was a backup drive and it has data on it that I need to save. Currently that drive is disconnected and I am not doing anything with it. I simply want to take my two 36GB striped drives, fix the boot manager and get Vista loaded again.

On a side note, I agree with you about the folks that purchased systems with Vista preloaded....shafted without a disk. I really don't like the fact that manufacturers are shipping systems without disks anymore. What are they saving themselves??? .10 to .15 cents??? What happens when the drive with that image goes out all together with? I can't believe that manufacturers leave it up to the user to create backup disks. I suspect the only reason why most manufacturers do that is because they are counting on people who will not make their backup disks just so they can rape them for $40-$50 to send out a media kit when people aren't prepared for a bad drive. Anyway......back to my Vista issues. I'm going to try the Microsoft utility that NT50 mentioned....I'll follow up in a bit to let you folks know if that works.

[Mofohead Profile]

Well, here's my update. The bootrec.exe utility was exactly what I was looking for....however, it did not fix the problem. I got the same boot error I was receiving before.

blah blah blah
0xc0000034
blah blah blah
files needed by bcd are missing, blah blah blah

I guess I should say that it did fix the problem with drive number enumerating with every failed attempt. Now, no matter how many times the install fails and I retry, the drive stills comes up as "disk 0 partition 1". So that much is fixed thanks to the bootrec utility. The system still will not boot after the install and it gives me the above mentioned error at the failed boot manager screen.

Anyway, as a last ditch effort, I booted to my raid config utility and broke the stripe, did individual formats, then left the two drives as individual drives as opposed to a striped or mirrored array. I then booted to the Vista dvd, loaded my sata drivers and the two drives showed up as follows:

disk 0 partition 1 primary
disk 1 partition 1 primary

....as expected. I then selected disk 0 and created a new partition and formatted. When I selected disk 0 and hit "next" I expected Vista to attempt an install.....instead Vista barked at me and said "requirements have not been met for Vista to proceed with installation". WHAT?!?!?!? WHAT REQUIREMENTS?!?!?!?! Is Vista all of the sudden not able to install on a single 10,000 RPM 36GB hard drive????

I think the bootrec utility did work to fix my boot record but I think I have bigger issues than I originally thought. Perhaps when my power supply went out it hosed my mainboard as well....I don't know.

[Grav!ty Profile]

I've had a similar problem in the past when breaking my RAID0 array and have had to boot to my XP CD and create new partitions and then delete them and format them a few times before being able to install anything on the two drives (WD 36GB Raptors).

It looks like your'e in a similar spot there Mofohead and it's probably that new MBR's need to be written to the bootsectors of the drives.