Terry, Hardly watch the news and enjoy something fun and entertaining that deals with cars. I've watched the American version of Top Gear and its good but the English guys have a chemistry that can't be beat. Anyway, do you have an command that will display the all the different drives. I think the restore process creates one or two temporary drives. I know how to change drives but I would like to know which drive I need to deal with. I could probably google this and find out quickly. I just wish I could get my wife's borked computer fixed before we go to the Geek Squawd. Thanks again
Ran chkdsk /r in the windows vista partition and got this:
Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Chkdsk may run if this volume is dismounted first.
ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID.
Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? <Y/N>
Selected Y, it dismounted the volume, and ran. Got this:
CHKDSK is verifying files <stage 1 of 5>...
96256 file records processed.
File verification completed.
30 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
0 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes <stage 2 of 5>...
369964 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
5 unindexed files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors <stage 3 of 5>...
96256 security descriptors processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
11985 files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data <stage 4 of 5>...
96240 files processed.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space <stage 5 of 5>...
3784231 free clusters processed.
Free space verification complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
25181855 KB total disk space.
9844520 KB in 84141 files.
37276 KB in 11987 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
163135 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
15136924 KB available on disk.
4096 bytes in each allocation table
6295463 total allocation units available on disk.
3784231 allocation units available on disk.
Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50.
C:\>
Ran startup repair and got this under View problem details:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: StartupRepairV2
Problem Signature 01: ExternalMedia
Problem Signature 02: 6.0.60000.16386.6.0.6000.16386
Problem Signature 03: 0
Problem Signature 04: 65537
Problem Signature 05: unknown
Problem Signature 06: MissingOSLoader
Problem signature 07: 0
Problem Signature 08: 3
Problem Signature 09: FixBootConfig
Problem Signature 10: 2
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 10333
Upon reboot got same black windows boot manager screen.
Addendum:
I deleted all of the partitions on the drive, used restore disks with no errors this time, and BINGO booting Vista!!!!!!!!!! It is such a beautiful thing that my wife will wake up to a fixed computer. Thanks to all your help but I figured it out with some more reading and google.