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Hello,
After looking through my post, I realized its very long-winded but I was trying to be detailed. There's a short version at the bottom if you're looking for my question.
I recently reformatted one of my two hard drives, which previously contained a Windows XP install and a Vista Ultimate install and now I am getting a Boot Disk Failure. Windows XP was on an 400 GB IDE hard drive (Disk 0), and Vista was on a 500 GB SATA drive (Disk 1). I did the reformat in Windows Vista, in the Computer Management screen. After it finished, I restarted my computer and received the error "BOOTMGR is missing, press Ctrl Alt Delete to restart." From what I understand after looking into this, when I installed Vista onto Disk 1, it put the Boot manager on Disk 0 instead of Disk 1, so when I reformatted Disk 0 the Boot Manager was gone. I pulled out my Vista CD and tried to use the Repair installation option but it didn't even detect a drive with an operating system on it to repair. I also tried used the CMD prompt in the repair section, using the bootrec.exe command, to repair it but that did not work either. It also did not detect my second drive (designated as F:) but only the empty C: drive (the newly reformatted disk 0) with no operating system on it. I decided to try to install Vista onto my IDE drive (disk 0). I completed the install and now had a working operating system on Disk 0, but now I started getting the "Boot Disk Failure" error message on startup. I tried booting from my Vista CD and repairing again, but was unsuccessful again. I finally was able to make progress by going into the Boot Menu and booting from my IDE Hard Drive (Disk 0).
This took me to the screen asking me to select my operating system, and listed:
Current Version of Windows
Windows Vista Ultimate (recovered)
(I can't actually remember the exact wording for the top one)
By selecting Vista Ultimate, I'm able to boot from my Vista hard drive (Disk 1) and it works normally.
Short Version:
Here's my problem/question: At this point, I'm guessing that I'm still missing some of the files required to boot from my main hard drive (Disk 1) since I'm still getting Disk Boot Failure errors. How can I reinstall these files? If I boot from the Vista CD, the repair tool still doesn't recognize that Disk 1 is even there. If I'm incorrect in my assessment of the problem, is there something else I can do to fix this? Thanks!
After looking through my post, I realized its very long-winded but I was trying to be detailed. There's a short version at the bottom if you're looking for my question.
I recently reformatted one of my two hard drives, which previously contained a Windows XP install and a Vista Ultimate install and now I am getting a Boot Disk Failure. Windows XP was on an 400 GB IDE hard drive (Disk 0), and Vista was on a 500 GB SATA drive (Disk 1). I did the reformat in Windows Vista, in the Computer Management screen. After it finished, I restarted my computer and received the error "BOOTMGR is missing, press Ctrl Alt Delete to restart." From what I understand after looking into this, when I installed Vista onto Disk 1, it put the Boot manager on Disk 0 instead of Disk 1, so when I reformatted Disk 0 the Boot Manager was gone. I pulled out my Vista CD and tried to use the Repair installation option but it didn't even detect a drive with an operating system on it to repair. I also tried used the CMD prompt in the repair section, using the bootrec.exe command, to repair it but that did not work either. It also did not detect my second drive (designated as F:) but only the empty C: drive (the newly reformatted disk 0) with no operating system on it. I decided to try to install Vista onto my IDE drive (disk 0). I completed the install and now had a working operating system on Disk 0, but now I started getting the "Boot Disk Failure" error message on startup. I tried booting from my Vista CD and repairing again, but was unsuccessful again. I finally was able to make progress by going into the Boot Menu and booting from my IDE Hard Drive (Disk 0).
This took me to the screen asking me to select my operating system, and listed:
Current Version of Windows
Windows Vista Ultimate (recovered)
(I can't actually remember the exact wording for the top one)
By selecting Vista Ultimate, I'm able to boot from my Vista hard drive (Disk 1) and it works normally.
Short Version:
Here's my problem/question: At this point, I'm guessing that I'm still missing some of the files required to boot from my main hard drive (Disk 1) since I'm still getting Disk Boot Failure errors. How can I reinstall these files? If I boot from the Vista CD, the repair tool still doesn't recognize that Disk 1 is even there. If I'm incorrect in my assessment of the problem, is there something else I can do to fix this? Thanks!
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