EasyBCD won't run

Me again....
I d/loaded the Vista recovery, unzipped to a pendrive and set BIOS to boot from pendrive...
I reboot and it gives me an error, asks me to press any key and proceeds to boot from my HD. Am I doing something wrong ? It seems quite foolproof...
 
You shouldn't need to use the Vista repair disk at all, oggie.

If EasyBCD is now working (and it should be), just launch EasyBCD on XP on the machine you want a dual-boot on.

Go to Bootloader Setup -> Write MBR
Add New Entry -> Windows XP -> Add

Then reboot to use.
 
No - on my "regular" pc...it couldn't find bcd so I gave it one of Vista repair disc but it keeps referring to it not drive C: - obviously no good...
 
No, that won't work, you'll need to locate the actual BCD on your regular machine.

You have no BOOT\BCD file anywhere? Or a BOOTMGR file on any of the partitions?
 
Oggie, was XP "system" before you reinstalled it ?
If so you've removed all the W7 boot files (they're on "system") when you reinstalled, hence the lack of a BCD now.
 
Afraid not...now I Can run EasyBCD and it is set up for XP and Vista but it just boots XP...boot menu never appears....want a screenshot of EasyBCD ?

Addendum:

Before I re-installed XP, it had XP on drive C: and Vista on D: and on boot I was asked which to boot, XP being default. When I installed XP it was a straightforwards install on C:....now it simply boots XP - no options.
 
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OK, sounds like you formatted C: during the setup of XP.

You'll need to boot from the Vista Recovery CD to fix things.

The pen drive you made earlier will work, but you'll need to do something first:
cmd:

Code: 
cd "c:\program files\NeoSmart Technologies\easybcd\bin"
bootsect.exe /nt60 x: /force
bootsect.exe /nt60 x: /mbr /force

Where bootsect is the letter of the pen drive.
 
Right, but the boot files are placed on C:, not the Vista partition... that explains why EasyBCD cannot locate the bootloader.
 
You won't belive it : it is not loading from pendrive..... : I get :
Disk error
Press any key to restart
 
Did you extract all the files that were in the ISO to the root of the pen drive? and is it a FAT32 or NTFS partition? Did the two bootsect.exe commands execute OK?

If it's not any more difficult to use a CD and you have some spare CDRs lying around, that's the most reliable way: Burning ISO Images with ImgBurn - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki - but you shouldn't need to, the pen drive trick should work!
 
It is FAT32
I extracted all files to it
A subdir called "boot" containing 3 files : bcd, boot.sdi and bootfix.bin
A subdir called "sources" containing 1 file : boot.win
A file called : bootmgr
bootsec.exe...what, where ?
I have lots of empty cd's but can't put in drive....
:frowning:
 
Yeah, that's all correct.

My instructions in post #49 had the bootsect.exe steps that you need to run in order to make the pen drive bootable. Did you follow them? Did they work?
 
We had this same issue at work, turns out you sometimes need to format the USB from Windows Vista or 7 :frowning:

I don't know if it'll do any good, but you could try formatting the USB to NTFS from Windows XP and trying again?
 
Ok, I'll try this afternoon (I'm on other computer now) and will search for Vista disc....

Addendum:

I cannot format with NTFS allows FAT32 or exFAT (whatever that is). Seems I HAVE to find Vista disc....
 
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Why can't you do ntfs :S

You can try to format from the commandline and see if that let's you use a different filesystem.

You can either find your vista cd to access the recovery console from there, or find a blank cd and burn our recovery iso. Sorry!
 
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