Vista bootloader problems (after setting up dual boot with XP)

hardwire

Member
Hello all -

I had successfully set up a dual boot environment with pre-installed vista and xp. Things were fine until I installed some windows updates and rebooted. I was then welcomed with a "Hard Disk Error" and was unable to boot into any operating system.

I have tried the Bootloader recovery from DVD tutorial with no luck. The problems I have run into are as follows:

running
Code:
x:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force
gives me the error "the volume does not contain a recognised file system".

I tried to take a look at the volume in diskpart and it only showed the xp partition in RAW format. no utility on the vista DVD was able to identify the vista partition

I slaved the drive out on another machine (XP) and am able to explore the drive. I have read that EasyBCD can be run from an XP machine, but when I attemtp to run the most recent version (1.72) it alerts me that a vista bcd is not present and will only allow me to continue if I agree to the repair.

any help is greatly appreciated and thank you for taking the time.
 
bootsect isn't on X:\, it's on a random letter that is unique to your system. So you'll have to try a bunch of different letters until you find one that works for you.
 
Yes, I understand that. when I entered the command, I did as instructed and used the drive letter of my CD-ROM how the windows recovery environment recognized it (F: in my case).
 
No, no... my point is that it's not necessarily the CD drive. Try other letters, too.

We've had people that couldn't ever find that file even after trying all 26 letters, but usually it's there, somewhere.
 
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