Hi guys, I have a maaaajor problem :(!

[Neonoob]

First of all I would like to introduce myself quikly, my name is Faat, 22 years old, student social law, living in the Netherlands.

Now comes the problem...
I wanted to make a partition with a partition program when I had vista running, it worked, I made a partition next to my vista partition. After that I rebooted with a xp cd to install on the 2nd partition... I thought it would give me the option to choose wich OS I wanted to run, but no, it just keep on starting on Xp all the time.
The problem then was that I didnt backup very important files that I really really need to deliver this week for school

I tried a linux live cd, but it wont read the vista drive, I tried a recovery cd from here (wich i found by google), and it didnt work either...

So, I was asking myself, how can I save those files quik on a extern harddisk in a way???

Somebody plz help me out of this...

Best regards,

Faat

 

[Terry60]

Hi Faat, welcome to NST.
When you install an older Windows after a newer version, the old boot manager (XP's NTLDR in your case) overwrites the newer one (Vista's bootmgr) and is not forward compatible with the new system, so cannot be made to boot it.
You must put the Vista bootmgr back in charge.
Boot from your Vista DVD if you have one, or the recovery disk you downloaded from here. select "repair your computer" then "startup repair"
Do this whole sequence 2 or 3 times until the system boots into Vista unaided.
If you're lucky, the repaired Vista boot will have detected XP and automatically created a dual-boot entry for it ("previous version of Windows"), and you can use EasyBCD 2.0 (change settings) to rename it to XP or whatever you want to call it.
If the dual boot isn't set up, use EasyBCD to add an entry for XP (don't try to change the drive it points to) and accept the offer to auto-configure the XP boot.ini for you.
I don't know what Linux you're using, but using this download will certainly give you a system which can access your Windows partitions, if you ever need it in future.

 

[Neonoob]

Hi Faat, welcome to NST.
When you install an older Windows after a newer version, the old boot manager (XP's NTLDR in your case) overwrites the newer one (Vista's bootmgr) and is not forward compatible with the new system, so cannot be made to boot it.
You must put the Vista bootmgr back in charge.
Boot from your Vista DVD if you have one, or the recovery disk you downloaded from here. select "repair your computer" then "startup repair"
Do this whole sequence 2 or 3 times until the system boots into Vista unaided.
If you're lucky, the repaired Vista boot will have detected XP and automatically created a dual-boot entry for it ("previous version of Windows"), and you can use EasyBCD 2.0 (change settings) to rename it to XP or whatever you want to call it.
If the dual boot isn't set up, use EasyBCD to add an entry for XP (don't try to change the drive it points to) and accept the offer to auto-configure the XP boot.ini for you.
I don't know what Linux you're using, but using this download will certainly give you a system which can access your Windows partitions, if you ever need it in future.

Hello Terry, Thank you for your welcome + very nice explanation!

I tried the recovery option 'Startup Repair' 3 times and it says: 'Startup Repair cannot repair this computer automatically'
But the list stays empty by the way at the start when you press Startup Repair, so my Vista drive/OS isnt available there, so what now:scared:

About the linux, I already used that one, its very good, but it cant open/copy the partition I need, but thank god it still displays it...

Any idea??:scared:

 

[JustinW]

Hello Faat,

From the menu where you are given the option to perform startup repair select command prompt instead. In there, try:

chkdsk c: /r

That should scan the disk for bad blocks and correct them if possible. It'll take awhile but once its done give startup repair another go.

 

[Terry60]

You can definitely access an NTFS Vista partition and retrieve all the data from it using an Ubuntu live distro. Post back if you can't get it to work. Someone will advise you.
If the auto-repair doesn't work after you've run chkdsk, follow the instructions for a manual repair in the wiki.