New to easyBCD, but before I start

Hi, my vista system starting having trouble a few days ago which is as follows

Vista Ultimate
2 drive arrays, one setup to boot

my boot array got corrupted so I purchased a extra IDE drive to install vista on so I can recover my data and fix my boot partition, by deleting and recreating. I popped in the eide drive and installed vista, recovered my data, fixed my partition then went and installed vista on my original boot partition.

So now the eide drive shows up as the system but my computer boots from the correct array partition. if I remove the eide drive it wont boot from the partition so im guessing the vista install marked the eide drive as the system and not the boot partition.

How can I fix this issue, i ended up deleting most of the vista files on the eide drive so its not a bootable drive anymore and if I try to go into drivemanager and format it, its greyed out.

so im guessing the boot info is on the eide since when I boot I get 2 vista's in the selection screen, but now with easybcd I have the boot folder and the bcd file on both drives, but still the same problem if I set the array to boot in the bios it says its not valid, i have to set the eide as the boot drive and select the first vista in the list to boot from the partition.

In disk management in admin shows this
Disk 0 D: Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition - this is the eide
Disk 1 C: Healthy (Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primany Parition) - this is my array
then the rest of my drives

Thoughts?
Thanks in advance
-Keith
 
Within Vista go Start>Right click on Computer>Manage. When that domes up select the Disk Management option. There you will want to right click on the drive that you want to be the active system drive. The one you currently are boot from. There should be the option to make ti the system drive. Do it. Then reboot. Insert the Vista DVD and recover the bootloader.

Repairing the Windows Vista Bootloader - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

This will make your new setup with the fresh install and files your boot drive and your system drive.
 
Thanks for the quick reply...

If I right click on the drive I want to boot the mark partition as active is greyed out, same as the EIDE drive. the only other options are, but it does say both are active in the management main screen. I didnt see anything about system.

open
explore
mark partition as active - grey
change drive letters and paths
format - grey
extend volume - grey
shrink volume
delete volume - grey
properties

Also let me add, since vista seems to decide whats the boot drive, would it hurt if I shutdown, removed the eide then booted with the vista cd in the drive. once in the installed then try to run the repair boot. when I ran it before with both drives connect it said it was fine. or is the problem cause the drive I boot from cant be set to system

Thanks
-Keith
 
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You can try ti disconnect the drive and do the repair it is worth a shot. Can also use GParted to set the drive as the system and boot drive as well. It is a free live CD partitioning/format tool which can also manage boot drives. That might also be a option.
 
If your new drive was only Vista for the temporary expedient of repairing the other system, and you intend to use it just for data in future, then disconnecting it and booting your Vista DVD to repair the boot process on the other system will make that bootable without a problem.
When you reconnect the new drive though, the fact that it's marked active might still make your system boot from it (that's where the Vista boot files are at the moment), and prevent Vista's disk mgmt from being able to format it (it won't touch anything marked system, boot,active or page).
There should only be one active disk on the system, but nothing seems to prevent several being marked that way, and the system will try to boot from the first one it sees.
I assume your other disks are SATA, which is a problem, since Vista always numbers the IDE drives lower, otherwise, if everything's IDE, you could swap the cables or the BIOS boot order.
Fixing the boot on your real system is easy enough, but you might need to do as Mak mentioned and use a third party disk manager to format your new disk.
 
I removed the EIDE drive and booted from the vista dvd. when its looking for the install it says it needs to repair the boot which I to and it says it cant write but its seeing something.

I tried again but after it failed I loaded the nvidia array driver, first the sata then the raid but got the same error.

I reconnected the EIDE and went back into the vista dvd. now both vista installs show up and if I repair either is says everything is fine. but its still the same problem. when I set the raid 1 to be the boot instead of the EIDE I get the following

file \boot\bcd
status 0XC000000F
error ready boot config data.

I set the EIDE back to boot and It boots off the array fine. I understand about the boot setup on the drives but its weird that even the vista install doesn't like when the EIDE is missing.

The raid drive is one full size partition 500+ megs which was re-partitioned before I install vista with the EIDE drive installed. ( I was about to remove it before the install, but I was like ahhh ill just do that after the install, my mistake) The difference before everything crashed was I had that drive in 2 smaller partitions. could that large partition mess anything up?

when the system is booted everything works great, the partitions test fine and EasyBCD doesn't give me any errors.

This is what easyBCD is showing
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=D:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default {ea27280e-142e-11dd-b89e-a1ee1cfa6275}
resumeobject {ea27280f-142e-11dd-b89e-a1ee1cfa6275}
displayorder {ea27280e-142e-11dd-b89e-a1ee1cfa6275}
{9c1569ec-1400-11dd-9144-dbc8d354c783}
toolsdisplayorder {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout 15

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {ea27280e-142e-11dd-b89e-a1ee1cfa6275}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Microsoft Windows Vista
locale en-US
inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {ea27280f-142e-11dd-b89e-a1ee1cfa6275}
nx OptIn

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {9c1569ec-1400-11dd-9144-dbc8d354c783}
device partition=D:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Microsoft Windows Vista
locale en-US
inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
osdevice partition=D:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {9c1569ed-1400-11dd-9144-dbc8d354c783}
nx OptIn

Thanks
-Keith

Addendum:

A bit different this time.

I went into the bootloader installation options and tried to reinstall the vista bootloader on c: but got an error so I uninstall then the reinstall worked on c:

Then I did the uninstall on the d: that worked no errors.

I booted with the eide and the array with the vista dvd and right away I saw the vista install and the correct size for the drive. I did the repair and it said it didn't need to be repaired.

of course I tried to set the array as the first boot device and got the same error. I just booted up with the EIDE set as the boot drive.

I have to run out for a bit but I think when I return ill try removing the eide drive and boot from the vista dvd since this was the first time anything showed up in the first repair screen and it was the correct drive.

Ill be back
thanks
-Keith
 
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