Vista and XP on ACER 5315 : My boot problems

Okay, I don't think this is going to solve without a re-install of VISTA. I changed things and now bcd file and the OS are on the same partion (2). That got rid of the memtest error. I think we have come to the end of the line. At least I got bootmgr to run. No idea why VISTA cannot now boot. I seem to have lost the recovery option (Alt + F10). ACER sell recovery disks, but I seem to have a serial number not recognised, so I probably will not be able to get a recovery disk. I may need to rely on someone local with an ACER disk.
 
Booting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To try to boot some Windows installs you are failing to boot you can download and burn the Super GRUB2 disk, then in your BIOS set it to boot from CD. You can play around with this if you break booting into one of your Windows temporarily.

Without reading every word of this thread, know that

1) Changing your BIOS boot order to install an OS, then changing it back can have unintended results, so avoid that by using CD/DVD boot media.
2) Your BIOS will use said boot order to look for a MBR at the start of the disk. A Windows MBR will load the boot sector (VBR) of the first active (the boot flag is set in the partition table) primary partition it finds. The boot sector (aka VBR - Volume Boot Record, or sometimes PBR - Partition Boot Record) is coded to load a specific system file on the same partition (bootmgr or NTLDR). It depends on what version of Windows you are dealing with.
3) Older versions of Windows generally won't boot newer boot volumes of Windows. So make sure your MBR, VBR, and BCD are aligned so they are using your latest version of Windows, AND are in the correct places, with the correct flags so the code in the BIOS will load the code in the MBR, which will chainload the correct VBR, which will load your bootmgr, which loads the BCD which will give you your menu to boot your other OSes (when you select an entry, bootmgr then calls winload.exe to load Windows 7 for example). This is where EasyBCD comes in, you can use it from your latest Windows install to easily add your additional boot entries, or nuke the old BCD and start over.
4) Getting the correct MBR and PBR into the correct places and setting boot flags (aka making a partition active) may take some knowledge and practice, but generally using a Windows 7 (or 8) install or recovery DVD can help with this.

Backup your data, and remember, the more you break it the more you learn when you fix it! Also, Google! lol...

Master boot record - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Volume boot record - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
What are system partitions and boot partitions

Repair Install - Windows 7 Forums
 
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