Put a Vista drive with corrupt bcd into my XP machine

[cdooer]

Hello. A friend of mine is suffering from the error message;

"Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause.

File: \Boot\BCD
Status 0xc000000f

An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data."

I tried installing a copy of XP on the machine, so I could dual boot and run EasyBCD and repair the boot manager. The install keeps blue screening on me, so I thought I would just put the sata laptop drive in my desktop machine, let it boot up in a slave configuration, and then run EasyBCD against it. I'm guessing this is not a supported config, since I keep getting the error 'Valid BCD Registry net detected'.

I don't have the Vista disk either. Is there any other way I can do this from my XP installation?

 

[SIW2]

You need to put the HD back in your friend's machine and use the Vista recovery disc to try and repair the startup process.

Recovering the Vista Bootloader from the DVD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

Recovery Disc download:

Windows Vista Recovery Disc Download The NeoSmart Files

Hope it helps

 

[cdooer]

Worked like a charm. Thanks for the advice.

 

[SIW2]

You're welcome.