Reinstalling Vista After Boot Failure

R

rpkbahamas

Member
dear guru, help me please.
i am in a soup. my computer was working just fine with dual booting vista and xp prof for the past 4 months. unfortunately i decided to open the hardware manager and did some thing, and my F: partition got deleted.-may be the partition with xp in it, i am not sure. now, vista was working well. now comes the problem. when i restared the system, it wont boot. now to make matters worse after several attempts to restart, i decided to reinstall xp.- and formatted the drives many times thinking that it will fix evrything. but nothing works. it keep installing and restart. but wont start windows.
i put my vista cd, it repairs, but it says to install from my xp, because i have only an upgrade version with me. my hard drives are seagate baracudda. is there any way i can get my computer running?? your valuable input expecting.
 
Well you can use the upgrade disc to install Vista. There is a work around for that. Not sure if CG will allow for me to post or talk about that. But google for it and you will find it.

As for you dilemma. IT sounds as if you made the partition inactive. Since you don't have a active OS working maybe you can use GParted to get your partitions all set up and active again.
 
So long as he already has an XP installation/CD I don't think that should be a problem :smile:

However, you can use the Upgrade DVD to repair a broken Vista, right? Mak, do you know if that "advanced options" and "startup repair" features are there for an upgrade DVD?
 
Honestly CG i dont know. I have not seen or used a Upgrade disc at all. I am like you and got my Vista from M$ which are all full DVD's.

But either extent when you boot the Vista DVD you will go thru the beginning part of the setup. Let it load the files and when you get the big Window with "Install Now" in the middle DO NOT CLICK IT. Instead look to the lower left hand corner and see if the repair options are there. If they are let us know and we can help you along further.
 
hi, guys, thanks for the reply.
i tried the vista upgrade, but after it loads and ask for activation code, all it says is that i can activate it only from the other windows. that means i have to get the xp running anyway.
well i tried to use the repair option, but again it ask for the activation code and the rest is same.
let me check Gparted and let you know the progress. thanks again.
 
I think you let the Vista setup go too far - it's not supposed to ask you for the key until you enter setup.

Did you get this page?

363935713_48d93e8955_o.png
 
yes, i got that page, then i gave the option for repair, it took 15 mnts to repair. at last it says, it is repaired, then it ask for activation code. i will try again now

Addendum:

ok, sorry,
i gave repair option, it opens a window for repair of vista os. but under that is blank, ie, no os available and it gives an option for load drivers. now if i press to load drivers, it will ask for source which i dont know where to find. the same window, there is my computer, which i opened, it says, c & d drives, both even though have 320 gb each, it shows only 120 gb and its free. and the present drive is "x" drive???. now when i press continue, option, it opened another window with many option including start up repair. at the end of repair it says, partition error which it repaired and it restarts and comes to the same window you showed . if i try to install, it says i can do only from a previous version of windows only. is there any way i can reinstall the xp in my other drive. mind you, this is a SATA drive, with 2 hard drives, no raid activated. thanks for your patience

Addendum:

guru, another problem i noted is that when ever i try to reinstall xp, it load all files, then it try to restart and it says starting windows on the blue screen itself, then it goes on to set up again. it doesnt seems to kick start the newly installed files for windows to start up. then every time it want to install the setup files, it needs to format the drive, before it can install it. is it bios error or my hard drive error or software problem.? please help.
 
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The question is, when your remove your Vista DVD from the drive and all, can you now boot into Vista?
 
no, i cant boot at all.i cant even get to the point were i can press f8 button. once the motherboard logo appears, then it keeps restarting after vwaiting for the cd or hartd drive.
i will delete all the partitions and try to reinstall. but can i reinstall vista if i do that?
 
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