Vista Twista or how I scr*wed my PC

laserbeam

Member
Hi all,

Here's my little story, hope you will enjoy reading and give me some advice. :smile:

First, specs - HP E4500 dual core, 2G RAM, 320HDD SATA. It came with Vista Home pre-installed. I imaged my old sys with Acronis True Image with Universal restore and got 3 partitions - XP pro SP2 MCE, another version of XP pro and a partition for data storage.
Leter I installed Vista Enterprize over the second XP install. And so it worked for about 6 months with no major problems.

Untill...I got, what I suspect a boot virus.
PC would freeze, AVG would tell me that my MBR is damaged, doing chkdsk brought "Autocheck is not available on RAW drives".
I tried to use Xp's install disk to fixmbr, but I couldn't boot it, now I know that it's because of Sata drivers.

So, I started poking around.
Tried Partition Doctor. No results. Tried TestDisk. Well, that made a difference, but not the one I wanted - neither of the OS's would boot, all I got was Vista boot loader, choosing "Earlier Version of Windows" or Vista would give me ntldr and winlogon is missing errors.

Br-r-r-r!

I searched more and came across EasyBCD. Since I couldn't boot into it, I used tutorials on how to fix the boot from here - Recovering the Vista Bootloader from the DVD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

I went all the way through step 3 and 4 - Nuclear Holocaust :-|, and now I can boot Vista only.
I don't see the bootloader anymore, nor the option to boot XP :frowning:
And when Vista boot's I get a few errors about dll's (will post them soon). And it's pretty much unusable - desktop is not functioning properly and I don't see most of the icons, settings and prog's.

This is the current state of affairs.
I would like to get XP and Vista dualboot again!
Is this possible???
Thank you if you can shed some light on my ignorance.
 
Hello laserbeam, welcome to NST.
You should be able to use EasyBCD to add an entry to your Vista boot menu to boot XP.
Just navigate to the Add/Remove Entries section, and under the Windows tab, make sure the "NT/XP" option is selected in the Type menu, and then simply hit Add Entry. You want to do this though with EasyBCD 2.0 Beta which will give you an option at this point to autoconfigure boot.ini. So hit Yes.
Then, simply copy over the files NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM into the root of the "system" partition (as seen from Disk Management), and XP should boot when you select it in the boot menu.

Jake
 
I'll try this now.
I will have Vista errors listed as well, there seems to be a problem with it too.
Oh, I can't install easyBCD on Vista, it tells me I need .Net 2.0 and it seems I can't install .Net lower then 3.0.
What should I do?
THX
 
EasyBCD does need .net 2.0 but on Vista you shouldnt need to install anything as .net 3.0 I believe is already installed out of box. .net 3.0 > is backwards compatiable with .net 2.0 applications.

Post the errors or any screenshots you have.
 
EasyBCD does need .net 2.0 but on Vista you shouldnt need to install anything as .net 3.0 I believe is already installed out of box. .net 3.0 > is backwards compatiable with .net 2.0 applications.

Post the errors or any screen shots you have.


Yes, it had 3.0 installed, but I guess something went wrong with it.
Ok, I'll go home and post those error msg's.

Addendum:

I also wanted to add that my XP is 32 and Vista is 64 bit.

So, when I boot Vista I get these errors:

1. ie4uinit,exe - ordinal not found,
ordinal 654 is missing in the dll iertutil.dll

2. then I see "preparing your desktop" message for about 2min
3. then I get "IE Per-User Initialization Utility has stopped working"

4. rundll32.exe - entry point not found
the procedure entry point SdbGetAppCompatDataSize could not be located in dll
apphelp.dll

5. then the same one about ordinal 654, see point 1.

6. and again - "IE Per-User Initialization Utility has stopped working"

and then I get a balloon - Your user profile was not loaded correctly

That's all.
 
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And which error are you getting when you run EasyBCD? From your description it sounds like Windows problem(s) in general.
 
Sounds like your Vista problem is not actually a boot problem. It gets past the boot, but something in your system is messed up. I'll try searching the Net and see what I can dig up that may help you. BTW, how were you able to attempt to install EasyBCD on Vista if it doesn't startup?
 
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And which error are you getting when you run EasyBCD? From your description it sounds like Windows problem(s) in general.

I can't copy EasyBCD from a flashdrive, when I try to ran it from it I get an error message that I need .Net 2.0.
Vista was working fine till I messed up the boot...

Addendum:

Sounds like your Vista problem is not actually a boot problem. It gets past the boot, but something in your system is messed up. I'll try searching the Net and see what I can dig up that may help you. BTW, how were you able to attempt to install EasyBCD on Vista if it doesn't startup?

In this case it's not a strictly a boot problem, but remember, I used to dual-boot XP on it as well.
Bootloader disappeared and now I can only boot Vista, but even that doesn't finish well.
I get "your profile didn't load properly" and can't really use Vista because everything is messed up - prog's don't work, etc.
Could this be due to the drive ID's changed? or something like this?
Maybe if I could get XP and Vista dualboot again and set it to where it was before everything would work fine again?

Can I take out the HDD and connect it as an external drive on Win2K machine and edit the boot this way? Would it be the right way to do this?
 
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One thing you can do, so you can at least get into XP, if you have an XP installation CD, is boot from the XP installation CD, hit "R" to get to the Recovery Console, and then run the following commands:
Code:
fixmbr
fixboot
That will put XP's bootloader back in charge, and you will be able to boot into XP, but not Vista. Then, from XP, you can try any solutions to your Vista problem you find, by browsing the Vista partition, copying over needed files, etc. :wink: And then, if you ever manage to fix your Vista problem, you can always put Vista back in charge of the boot again by using a Vista dvd if you have one (or our recovery disk, otherwise), and running Startup Repair 2-3 times from the DVD. Then you will be able to add an entry to your Vista boot menu to boot XP, and dual-boot, with EasyBCD.
As for your EasyBCD problem, it can't be run from a flash drive, as you found out, since it requires .Net 2.0, though 2.0 final of EasyBCD is supposed to make it possible.
 
One thing I see that is different is that Vista is on E:\ partition, and it used to be on C:

Addendum:

One thing you can do, so you can at least get into XP, if you have an XP installation CD, is boot from the XP installation CD, hit "R" to get to the Recovery Console, and then run the following commands:
Code:
fixmbr
fixboot
That will put XP's bootloader back in charge, and you will be able to boot into XP, but not Vista. Then, from XP, you can try any solutions to your Vista problem you find, by browsing the Vista partition, copying over needed files, etc. :wink: And then, if you ever manage to fix your Vista problem, you can always put Vista back in charge of the boot again by using a Vista dvd if you have one (or our recovery disk, otherwise), and running Startup Repair 2-3 times from the DVD. Then you will be able to add an entry to your Vista boot menu to boot XP, and dual-boot, with EasyBCD.
As for your EasyBCD problem, it can't be run from a flash drive, as you found out, since it requires .Net 2.0, though 2.0 final of EasyBCD is supposed to make it possible.

That was one of the first things I tried, unfortunately I can't boot from XP disk, unless I do a custom boot cd with Sata drivers, which is a bit difficult in my situation.

What else could I do in this situation?

Thank you.
 
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That was one of the first things I tried, unfortunately I can't boot from XP disk, unless I do a custom boot cd with Sata drivers, which is a bit difficult in my situation.
Check your BIOS, and see if you can change operating modes, say from AHCI to ATA or "Compatibility" mode. If you can, then make sure to do that, and save the changes, and attempt to boot from the XP disk again.
 
Check your BIOS, and see if you can change operating modes, say from AHCI to ATA or "Compatibility" mode. If you can, then make sure to do that, and save the changes, and attempt to boot from the XP disk again.

Let's see, I have "Sata1 Controler Mode" with IDE, RAID (Current setting) and AHCI modes.
Which one should I use?
 
One thing I see that is different is that Vista is on E:\ partition, and it used to be on C:
Interesting...
It might explain some of your troubles. The drive letters for Vista are stored in the registry, and it is possible to change them using a Vista dvd or our recovery disk. We had a thread around here somewhere not long ago on how to do it, but I'll have to find it...

Addendum:

Let's see, I have "Sata1 Controler Mode" with IDE, RAID (Current setting) and AHCI modes.
Which one should I use?
Use Sata1 Controller Mode.
 
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Perform a repair installation (not just the commands cool provided) so hopefully any damaged system files are fixed in the proccess. It'll look like you're re-installing but all your programs and files well remain intact.
 
Perform a repair installation (not just the commands cool provided) so hopefully any damaged system files are fixed in the proccess. It'll look like you're re-installing but all your programs and files well remain intact.

That might be a good thing to do. Although I did fixmbr and fixboot as Cool suggested (BTW, had to choose IDE option in "Sata1 Controler Mode" menu), but I still get "autocheck is not available for RAW drives" at boot, it's the problem I had started with and that I can't find a way to fix as of yet, so, maybe doing reinstall will fix it, Unless, there is a better way to do it.

THX

Addendum:

If anyone has experience fixing RAW drive error, please, let me know.
I spend a few hours now searching the net but it seems like nobody could find a solution.
Maybe some of you guys can crack the "RAW Code"?
It would certainly bring alot of visitors here.

I don't understand HDD structure good enough to even have theories, but I am sure anything can be fixed, just need the right brain and right tool.

Anyone???
 
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TestDisk or quick format plus other utilities that can read a drive and hopefully allow you to recover the lost files.
 
If you quick format the partition you may be able to recover files with utilities such as Restoration or Recurvia.
 
That might be a good thing to do. Although I did fixmbr and fixboot as Cool suggested (BTW, had to choose IDE option in "Sata1 Controler Mode" menu), but I still get "autocheck is not available for RAW drives" at boot, it's the problem I had started with and that I can't find a way to fix as of yet, so, maybe doing reinstall will fix it, Unless, there is a better way to do it.

THX
Sounds like your XP partition's bootsector may be messed up...
Using TestDisk, like Justin suggested, you can rebuild the bootsector, and hopefully fix the problem (with your data still intact).
Just follow these simple steps:


  1. Get Testdisk (the Windows version) from this link: TestDisk Download - CGSecurity
  2. Extract the contents of the .zip file to a directory of your choosing
  3. Open up testdisk_win.exe (located inside the directory you extracted the files to)
  4. Create>select disk XP is on>Proceed>Intel>Advanced>select XP partition>[boot] selected>Press Enter>Rebuild BS
 
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