Vista Ulitmate Won't boot without CD

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k1pp3r

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jun 16, 2004
Messages
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Vista is pretty!!!

Ok, soooo i loaded Vista on my machine after doing a lot of customer installs.

Loaded vista from USB CDROM, now after installing, when booting i get the bootmgr is missing press ctrl alt del to reboot

BUT, if the vista disk is in, the system boots fine,


I have tried the boot repair, it finds nothing, little help please

edit:
Sorry, vista ultimate 64 bit
 
Is there some reason you're using an external USB drive? No internal optical or something? Is this a laptop?
 
Joe Average said:
Is there some reason you're using an external USB drive? No internal optical or something? Is this a laptop?
Click to expand...

Its a desktop, no internal DVD drive just external.

Frankly in an antec sonata 2, with a 9800gtx, it would be pure hell to hook up another IDE drive, lol, not to mention i have two ide HDD hooked up, and one SATA

the SATA is the boot drive.

Just tried

bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /scanOS ( this came up with 0 results)

Strange cause when i boot to the vista DVD it sees the vista install
 
I can't think of what it's called but there is a program that lets you modify your OS boot loader and make changes. It's just a front end to stuff already editable by you but it makes it to easy. I'm sure there is a way to change where your OS looks for files at or else at least be able to see a setting is wrong.

But in the mean time...

Right click My Computer
Properties
Advanced System Settings
Environmental Variables
System Variables

Check that list out and make sure everything that has a path is pointing to C:\
 
Ok, this just got really odd,

System has 3 HDD

C:\ is a SATA 36 GB WD Raptor
D:\ is a IDE drive 80 GB
E:\ is a IDE drive 120 GB

I installed windows to the SATA drive, it even shows the install there from my computer,

However, if i set the HDD boot order to the 80 GB drive, it boots fine.
if its set to the 36 GB raptor (where windows is installed) it doesn't boot.

I guess the never fixed that load windows with multiple HDD BS did they?
 
k1pp3r said:
I guess the never fixed that load windows with multiple HDD BS did they?
Click to expand...
If you have another OS loaded on those HDD's it can cause problems. But look at the last post I made. If you have to reinstall but make sure you unhook the HDD's if they have OS on them and you don't want them in the boot menu.
 
bigdogchris said:
If you have another OS loaded on those HDD's it can cause problems. But look at the last post I made. If you have to reinstall but make sure you unhook the HDD's if they have OS on them and you don't want them in the boot menu.
Click to expand...

Everything points to C:\windows

the 36 GB drive where i installed vista had windows XP on it, but that was formated, no onther windows installs on the HDD's
 
The proper order for the commands would be:

bootrec /fixmbr (this MUST be done first so it wipes the MBR totally clean and readies it for the next command)
bootrec /fixboot (this is second, as just stated, and installs the boot loader to the MBR which is now clean)

If you do those commands in the reverse order, you write the boot loader and then wipe it clean, hence the inability to boot. So do it right... fixmbr first, then fixboot.

The fact that you admitted to having more than one physical hard drive is now making some of the reasons behind your issues clear. I know a lot of less experienced folk will complain and say it doesn't matter, but I assure you, having multiple physical hard drives in a machine when you install Vista (older versions of Windows aren't nearly as picky) will more than likely cause you issues, similar to the ones you're having right now.

Just disabling a drive in the BIOS isn't enough as Windows can see attached hardware anyway - it doesn't use BIOS routines for hardware detection, so you physically need to disconnect all but the one single hard drive that is the target for Vista. Once that's done, do the installation and I can practically guarantee you won't have issues. But leave more than one drive installed and you'll probably be back here asking for more assistance...
 
Joe Average said:
The proper order for the commands would be:

bootrec /fixmbr (this MUST be done first so it wipes the MBR totally clean and readies it for the next command)
bootrec /fixboot (this is second, as just stated, and installs the boot loader to the MBR which is now clean)

The fact that you admitted to having more than one physical hard drive is now making some of the reasons behind your issues clear. I know a lot of less experienced folk will complain and say it doesn't matter, but I assure you, having multiple physical hard drives in a machine when you install Vista (older versions of Windows aren't nearly as picky) will more than likely cause you issues, similar to the ones you're having right now.

Just disabling a drive in the BIOS isn't enough as Windows can see attached hardware anyway - it doesn't use BIOS routines for hardware detection, so you physically need to disconnect all but the one single hard drive that is the target for Vista. Once that's done, do the installation and I can practically guarantee you won't have issues. But leave more than one drive installed and you'll probably be back here asking for more assistance...
Click to expand...


I did them in that order, sorry i didn't post the correct order.

As far as having multiple drives hooked up. I know XP had the issue where you install with mulit HDD and your wondows drive would end up being the F:\ drive. However, i ASSumed they fixed this in vista, but apparently my bootmgr was written to my D drive, and the windows folder is on my C drive, thats just jacked up.

I only have 1 partition per drive right now. So i have no clue what vista is doing, guess i'll reload tonight and power down the other drives
 
k1pp3r said:
I did them in that order, sorry i didn't post the correct order.

As far as having multiple drives hooked up. I know XP had the issue where you install with mulit HDD and your wondows drive would end up being the F:\ drive. However, i ASSumed they fixed this in vista, but apparently my bootmgr was written to my D drive, and the windows folder is on my C drive, thats just jacked up.

I only have 1 partition per drive right now. So i have no clue what vista is doing, guess i'll reload tonight and power down the other drives
Click to expand...

Drive letters don't mean anything. They're assigned by Windows on the fly at boot time. Vista actually fixed one thing though, the system drive (where \Windows resides) is always C:. But bootmgr has to be installed on what the BIOS tells Windows setup is drive 0x80 (the first hard drive). So you end up booting from "D:\" even though your system is on "C:\". To stop that from happening, make sure no other drive is connected to the motherboard (as JoeAverage already said).

The weird drive letters in XP (e.g. F:\ H:\ etc) are because there are other drives that are already assigned letters when you created the partition. To solve this problem either unplug everything that gets a drive letter, or make sure to reboot after creating a partition.
 
ryan_975 said:
Drive letters don't mean anything. They're assigned by Windows on the fly at boot time. Vista actually fixed one thing though, the system drive (where \Windows resides) is always C:. But bootmgr has to be installed on what the BIOS tells Windows setup is drive 0x80 (the first hard drive). So you end up booting from "D:\" even though your system is on "C:\". To stop that from happening, make sure no other drive is connected to the motherboard (as JoeAverage already said).
Click to expand...
Well that makes sense, I was mostly looking for the cause now that i found out how to boot it up. I will reload with no other drives powered up, no biggie.

The weird drive letters in XP (e.g. F:\ H:\ etc) are because there are other drives that are already assigned letters when you created the partition. To solve this problem either unplug everything that gets a drive letter, or make sure to reboot after creating a partition.
Click to expand...

Yeah, i love how they fixed this in vista, but made the bootmgr install different.

Oh well i can start getting use to Vista now.

Thanks everyone
 
k1pp3r said:
Well that makes sense, I was mostly looking for the cause now that i found out how to boot it up. I will reload with no other drives powered up, no biggie.



Yeah, i love how they fixed this in vista, but made the bootmgr install different.

Oh well i can start getting use to Vista now.

Thanks everyone
Click to expand...

Well, the boot manager installs the same way it always has. Windows wants to get booted, so it installs its bootloader to the drive labeled as 0x80
 
What's with this "load Windows with multiple HDDs BS" BS, hey huh? There's no such thing and there never has been.

There's only people who set their rigs up thinking that they know what they're doing, don't really know what they're doing, don't end up with the drive their SYSTEM sees as primary boot being the one they decided to put Windows on, and then wondering why the hell the boot loader is on a different drive to the one Windows is on.


I've never had that problem. I've always made sure that the drive I wanted Windows to go on actually WAS the primary boot drive. It simply ain't a problem if the drives are correctly configured at the hardware level. Or did I completely miss something here?
 
Catweazle said:
I've never had that problem. I've always made sure that the drive I wanted Windows to go on actually WAS the primary boot drive. It simply ain't a problem if the drives are correctly configured at the hardware level. Or did I completely miss something here?
Click to expand...

I think you missed something, If you have a mixture of SATA and IDE drives, the SATA is NOT the primary HDD of the system, it sees the IDE first hince why my boot manager is on my IDE drive

And for the record, i never had a problem installing XP, never said i did please don't insult me saying i don't know how to setup my system cause i had a question on the FIRST time i have loaded Vista with multiply HDD
 
k1pp3r said:
I think you missed something, If you have a mixture of SATA and IDE drives, the SATA is NOT the primary HDD of the system, it sees the IDE first hince why my boot manager is on my IDE drive

And for the record, i never had a problem installing XP, never said i did please don't insult me saying i don't know how to setup my system cause i had a question on the FIRST time i have loaded Vista with multiply HDD
Click to expand...

SATA is the primary boot drive if you set it that way. Most BIOS's today have a configurable boot-order that lets you arrange each hard drive in any order you want.
 
ryan_975 said:
SATA is the primary boot drive if you set it that way. Most BIOS's today have a configurable boot-order that lets you arrange each hard drive in any order you want.
Click to expand...

It is set that way, cause XP was on that SATA drive when i formatted it.
 
ryan_975 said:
Yes it does.
Click to expand...

Obviously my board doesn't think so, or else my bootmgr would not be on my first IDE Hard drive.

Not: When installing Vista the HDD order i was given was

IDE Primary
IDE secondary
SATA

Boot ORDER in bois was

SATA
IDE primary
IDE secondary

Its no big deal, i'll fix it tonight
 
Funny how no one has yet considered the fact that when Vista creates partitions they're always Primary partitions until you can't have any more and then it'll make Extendeds with Logicals. One other possible reason he's having issues with the drive letters being out of sequence would be because the multiple physical drives are:

- set up with Primary partitions
- more than one of them is being seen as Active

Just something I figured I better toss out... ;)
 
Oh windows went on the C drive, the bootmgr went on the d drive, lol

I figured the easy way to fix it will be

bootrec /fixmbr
power down extra drives
repair the bootmgr

Should put the bootmgr on the correct drive then. We will see, i'm already prepared to reload the OS so it doesn't much matter.
 
Or you could just open the case, disconnect any physical drives except for the target drive where Vista is going to be installed, and install it inside of 20 mins and this would all be a bad memory. ;)
 
Its not a bad memory not, its learning vista, lol

Figured i would attempt to move the bootmgr first cause i feel like it ;)
 
k1pp3r said:
I think you missed something, If you have a mixture of SATA and IDE drives, the SATA is NOT the primary HDD of the system, it sees the IDE first hince why my boot manager is on my IDE drive
Click to expand...

When SATA drives first arrived there were a few cruddy mobos around which simply wouldn't let you successfully mix and match, no matter what, but most rigs since should allow you to configure the rig to enable SATA to be polled as IDE, and thus have a DATA drive be the system's primary.

Regardless, why would it matter a fuck if the boot loader is on one drive and the OS installation on another anyways? It ain't agonna hurt anything unless you go nuking (or ripping out) the drive with the boot loader on it, and if you do that anyways you only need to repair the boot afterwards.

ryan_975 said:
Vista actually fixed one thing though, the system drive (where \Windows resides) is always C:.
Click to expand...

heh heh...

Say what? Looky-look here:

computer.jpg


On that rig, that's as configured by the Vista install. The actual boot drive there is D:, and that's where the boot loader resides. What's now reporting there as C: and D: used to be all one partition, but with the XP install almost never needed nowadays it got shrunk down.

Joe Average explained it above. You get to the point where if you fiddle about any further you end up with extended partitions and logical drives. The XP install (which used to be the boot drive in actuality) is now a logical drive inside an extended partition. There's a drive letter 'missing' there because a drive has been removed from the rig since that Vista installation was put in place. And Vista is identifying as G: just as it has from the outset.

Please don't tell me that Vista ALWAYS makes itself C:, cause that just ain't true :D
 
Catweazle said:
When SATA drives first arrived there were a few cruddy mobos around which simply wouldn't let you successfully mix and match, no matter what, but most rigs since should allow you to configure the rig to enable SATA to be polled as IDE, and thus have a DATA drive be the system's primary.

Regardless, why would it matter a fuck if the boot loader is on one drive and the OS installation on another anyways? It ain't agonna hurt anything unless you go nuking (or ripping out) the drive with the boot loader on it, and if you do that anyways you only need to repair the boot afterwards.



heh heh...

Say what? Looky-look here:

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e171/Ratschnozzle/computer.jpg

On that rig, that's as configured by the Vista install. The actual boot drive there is D:, and that's where the boot loader resides. What's now reporting there as C: and D: used to be all one partition, but with the XP install almost never needed nowadays it got shrunk down.

Joe Average explained it above. You get to the point where if you fiddle about any further you end up with extended partitions and logical drives. The XP install (which used to be the boot drive in actuality) is now a logical drive inside an extended partition. There's a drive letter 'missing' there because a drive has been removed from the rig since that Vista installation was put in place. And Vista is identifying as G: just as it has from the outset.

Please don't tell me that Vista ALWAYS makes itself C:, cause that just ain't true :D
Click to expand...

Well, that the first I've seen it. Every install I've done since release, Vista called it's own system drive C:, even if XP existed before hand,
 
Catweazle said:
Regardless, why would it matter a fuck if the boot loader is on one drive and the OS installation on another anyways? It ain't agonna hurt anything unless you go nuking (or ripping out) the drive with the boot loader on it, and if you do that anyways you only need to repair the boot afterwards.
Click to expand...



Well it matters in my case because the drive it but the bootmgr on is getting replaced in a month, so i had the choice of fixing it now, or later and i choose to fix it now lol

By the way, i redid the bootmgr in about 10 minutes so its not that major of an issue.
 
lolz.

Yeah, that post was really just an excuse to stick a pin into ryan_975's "ALWAYS" bubble :D
 
I'm wondering if the ops issue is that at boot, the BIOS recognizes the USB drive as C:

Whenever I flash my computer, I notice that when its reading from "c", its actually treating the USB as c. If that is the case, once he disconnects the USB drive, the drives get rearranged, vista is confused because it thought there was a C drive ie the USB and thought it got installed on the D or whatever.

It's just a thought to his mess.
 
Slade said:
I'm wondering if the ops issue is that at boot, the BIOS recognizes the USB drive as C:

Whenever I flash my computer, I notice that when its reading from "c", its actually treating the USB as c. If that is the case, once he disconnects the USB drive, the drives get rearranged, vista is confused because it thought there was a C drive ie the USB and thought it got installed on the D or whatever.

It's just a thought to his mess.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't really call it a mess lol

Once the PC booted, my C drive was really my SATA drive.
 
Catweazle said:
lolz.

Yeah, that post was really just an excuse to stick a pin into ryan_975's "ALWAYS" bubble :D
Click to expand...

No need to be a smartass about it though. All I have go on is my own observations and evidence other provide (as you did in this thread). So in my case Vista has always named it system drive as C:, even if another copy of Windows was already installed on another drive or partition. XP was somewhat random. Sometimes it would map its system drive to C:. Other times it went to another letter.

As I said before, yours is the first I've seen otherwise, so excuse the hell out of me for having preconceptions based on my experiences.
 
ryan_975 said:
As I said before, yours is the first I've seen otherwise, so excuse the hell out of me for having preconceptions based on my experiences.
Click to expand...

No need to get defensive guys, I think its more of the choice of words that were used.

Claiming that "always makes windows on C:" would imply that MS stated this in a whitepaper and its impossible to make it another drive letter.

Choice of words is a very tricky task
 
k1pp3r... I hope you still see updates to this thread.

I'm pretty sure I have the "boot manager on D:, Vista on C:" problem that forces me to have a Vista install disc in my drive in order to boot. (Otherwise I get an "invalid boot device" error). I have output from EasyBCD at the end that should confirm.

Can you explain to me the process you used to relocate the boot manager to C:? I'd rather not do a complete re-installation of Vista at this point.

Thanks in advance for any help...

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=D:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default {fbc8ffdc-7214-11dd-98ad-c12269d7cac5}
resumeobject {fbc8ffdd-7214-11dd-98ad-c12269d7cac5}
displayorder {fbc8ffdc-7214-11dd-98ad-c12269d7cac5}
{77ed188a-7200-11dd-994d-d599d5eddfc4}
toolsdisplayorder {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {fbc8ffdc-7214-11dd-98ad-c12269d7cac5}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Microsoft Windows Vista
locale en-US
inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {fbc8ffdd-7214-11dd-98ad-c12269d7cac5}
nx OptIn
Click to expand...
 
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