Vista_Recovery_disk.iso

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foreigner

Member
Hi, Guru, I need your help,

I have a Toshiba Notebook that came with preinstalled Vista Ultimate and Recovery-Disk. I have a dual boot system with Vista on partition C: and - installed by myself - Windows XP on partition D, both Windows are German versions.
All systems worked well until I had a power failure during defragmenting the Vista partition. Now I couldn’t boot into Vista any more because winload.exe was not be found. Luckily I can boot into Windows XP; I checked the Vista partition with chkdsk, all seems normal and winload.exe is where it should be. So I thought only the path to winload.exe was no more correct. I run “EasyBCD” on the XP-System and tried to reinstall the “Vista Bootloader” but that didn’t help.
Since I have no repair center on my Recovery-CD I downloaded your copy of the CD that contains the contents of the "Repair your computer" section of the Windows Vista DVD. After successful burning, booting and selecting "Repair your computer" the repair process started and apparently worked well; but the requested reboot ended without success. The log showed a message that read about “Your operating system is not compatible with this version of Windows and can’t be repaired”. Now I am back on square one. I think that the different languages (English v. German) are the cause of this problem; what else could it be?

Well, I would like to ask you if you know where I could download a similar Repair-CD as yours but that has the option to select the German language as well. Or do you have some other solution?

I appreciate your help and thank you in advance
Foreigner
 
Hi Foreigner, long time no see.

You can use the manual recovery steps to recover your bootloader, regardless of whether the automated recovery process fails or not.
 
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Hi, Guru, here I’m again,

Sadly, I have bad news. I tried the manual repair as you suggested but had no luck.
The first command “bootrec.exe /fixmbr” ended successful but the second command “bootsect.exe /nt60 all force” failed with the message “bootsect.exe is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file”. The same message delivered the shutdown command.
I think my only choice is now to completely reinstall Vista with the Recovery-CD from Thoshiba. The trouble with this is that the entire disk will be reformatted and not only the Vista partition. Thoshiba has the Recovery-CD very bad constructed.

Thanks once more for your help
Foreigner
 
Not necessarily.

I think bootsect.exe can still be found, maybe in the /sources/ folder of the virtual drive.
 
Hi, Guru,

The "Command Prompt" started already with the folder "x:\sources". Was I supposed to change the path for "bootsect.exe" and if so to which one?
But I noticed that the path for the "Command Prompt" was "x:\windows\system32\cmd.exe", so I changed the directory from "x:\sources" to "x:\windows\system32\" and tried to run the commands "bootsect.exe" and "shutdown.exe" once again but the same error occurred; only "bootrec.exe" run without error.

I have yet another question: Remains my "Windows XP" bootable after "bootsect.exe /nt60 all force"; especially when the execution is only partially successful? Is it possibly that I lose "Windows XP" as well?

Yours sincerely
Foreigner
 
Sorry, it's in the \boot\ folder of the DVD drive's letter, actually,

Just a note, it's "bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force"

Windows XP should not be affected by this command.
 
Hi, Guru,

I couldn’t found bootsect.exe. Neither in any folder of the CD drive where the Repair-CD was inserted nor in the drive x: which was created after booting from the Repair-CD. But I found and could start bootsect.exe from my own Vista partition and not from the Repair-CD. Would that be OK?

The workflow would be:
1. I boot with the Repair-CD, adds the raid driver and my Vista-Installation will be found.
2. I start the “Command Prompt” and type x:\sources\bootrec.exe /fixmbr.
So far was I already, now comes the new part:
3. I change the drive letter to my Vista drive and type e:\windows\system32\bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force.
4. I change the drive letter back to the Repair-CD and type x:\sources\bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd.
5. I restart and hope that winload.exe can now be found and Vista Ultimate starts (and Windows XP too!).

When it still not works could possibly the fixboot command (bootrec.exe /fixboot) help in place of fixmbr? Or is that too dangerous? Would the work flow be the same than?

Thanks for your patience
foreigner
 
Hi, Guru,

My last attempt did also not fix the problem. Actually, it was worse because I couldn’t boot any more after the commands "bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force" and "bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd".

Vista still wouldn’t boot, the same error as always; maybe fixboot would help but I’m already too anxious (and frustrated). The ability to select Windows XP was lost; I had no more a "Dual Boot System" and had to Repair my Windows XP system. I can again start WinXP but have only a single boot system now.

I give up all repair attempts for now. I’ll wait until Windows Vista with service pack 1 is available, then buy a full Install-DVD and dispose the useless Recovery-CD from Toshiba. Hopefully the Vista system can then be successful repaired.

Thanks for trying to help me
Foreigner
 
I'm sorry it still didn't work for you - I'm thinking that perhaps something in your partition table is incorrect, because I can't see any other reason why bootsect would break your system otherwise...

EasyBCD uses alternative tools (namely mbrfix and bootpart) to make it work, so I'm not exactly sure where bootrec and bootsect may have failed - you'd have to ask MS about that.

Only other thing I can think of is to to reset BCD data in EasyBCD and then reinstall the vista bootloader in it as well from within Windows XP. Up to you though.
 
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