Vista Boot-need help!!

Question

Hi - I purchased a new 160GB WD hard drive, formatted it and loaded Windows Vista. During the process I had a small 10GB drive in as well. Everything seemed to go fine with reboots, etc. However, when I took out the 10gb drive my computer would NOT reboot. Apparently the boot manager is stored on the 10 GB drive! With the 10GB drive in everything boots fine but when I take it out - no boot, can't even boot with the CD ROM. BIOS recogiznes the 160GB Drive and no problem once I have booted with the 10GB drive in. Vista is located on the 160GB drive. Can anyone help me with this, how would the boot manager go on the 10GB drive and how can I get it on the new drive. Thanks for any help! sad smiley

Message Edited by Blun on 04-23-2007 10:20 PM

G_W_B · Answer

Drives are set to 'cable select'.  That is the way they have always been set.  Problem is that the Windows boot manager is not on the C: drive.

boppo · Answer

I would make a win 98 bootable cd and take out the 10 gig drive and fdisk the 160 and delete the non dos partition and then boot to the cd and install vista again.

boppo · Answer

How did you have the jumpers on the hd. i assume this is a desktop.

G_W_B · Answer

That may be what I have to do, but I just reactivated after installing the new hard disk ... had to call Microsoft.  I finally got to boot to the Vista install disk, did a repair and removed the small drive.  Now it will still look for 'Primary Disk 1' (not found).  It tells me to strike the F1 key to continue, and when I do it boots.  Why does it continue to look for 'Primary Disk 1'?

boppo · Answer

i don't know why you called MS, vista know what motherboard it was activated on not the HD. Some where in the boot ini it still thinks it has 2 drives I would say, vista is new to me also.

pcgeek11 · Answer

Plug the had disk into the other IDE Cable connector on the ribbon cable. The drives are assigned Primary and secondary by their position on the ribbon cable. Tthe master device goes at the end of the 18-inch cable(black connector), the middle-slave connector is grey, the blue connector goes onto the motherboard.

Or you could go back and set the Master Jumper and slave jumpers accordingly to make the large drive with Vista the Master and the 10 GB the slave.

See this it looks like you need a brush up: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCS-c.html

That is why.

pcgeek

Message Edited by pcgeek11 on 04-23-2007 11:14 PM

G_W_B · Answer

Hey folks, thanks for all the input!  I finally have this working with all your help.  I really appreciate ... I likely didn't approach this properly in the first place.  By the way, as I noted earlier, changing the hard drive is a big enough change to cause activation problems but after calling Microsoft I did get Vista reactivated.  I am now going to do an image of the new installation and hopefully won't run into this problem again!!  Thanks again!

keithg2 · Answer

I haven't tried this before, but you might be able to copy the Vista boot mgr files to your 160GB drive.   BACKUP YOUR DATA BEFORE PROCEEDING!   Turn off your computer. Put your 10GB drive back in and boot into Vista. Copy the following files from the 10GB drive to your 160GB C: partition. Some of the files/folders may be hidden so you'll want to go into Folder Options/View and uncheck the 'Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)'.   boot.mgr bootsect.bak /Boot (entire folder)   Turn off your computer Pull your 10GB drive out. Reboot your computer using your Vista DVD and do a 'Repair My Computer'. This hopefully *should* make your 160GB drive bootable to Vista.   Good luck!

Windows General

Vista Boot-need help!!

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