L
Linda Woodard
I upgraded my XP Pro sp2 machine yesterday to Vista Ultimate, keeping all of
my current programs and settings. All went well and when it completed I
enjoyed playing around with Vista while it dowloaded and installed all of
the current updates. When it finished and asked for a restart, I clicked on
yes. When it attempted to reboot it failed with an "Invalid partition
table" error and has continued to fail with that error every time.
I checked the BIOS setup and all of the drive devices -- in fact,
everything -- there was reporting correctly.
I booted with the Vista DVD and ran the repair function. It didn't find
anything wrong -- the log file shows all successful entries. That makes
sense because its not even getting through the bootup process to where it
would be trying to start windows.
While in the DVD, I ran the command box and was able to "CD" to all of the
drives and "DIR" all of the files and directories on them.
I remembered a FIXBOOT command on XP but there doesn't seem to be one, or an
equivalent, on Vista that I can find. In fact, I don't know what [DOS-like]
commands Vista does support from the DVD since "Help" itself is not found as
a command.
Thinking that I could just copy all of the files that I wanted to save on my
system disk [and then do an install of Vista] I tried a copy C:\*.* D:\*.*
but got an error telling me that wildcards were not allowed. The files that
I want to save (local mail files for MSN) are in the "Documents and
Settings" directory so I tried to go in there, thinking that I could just
copy them one at a time if I had to, but it gives me an error telling me
that access is denied.
I really don't want to lose either the data or current programs and
settings, but, of course, who does?
Is there a way that I can fix the boot record or partition table without
having to lose what's already on the disk?
my current programs and settings. All went well and when it completed I
enjoyed playing around with Vista while it dowloaded and installed all of
the current updates. When it finished and asked for a restart, I clicked on
yes. When it attempted to reboot it failed with an "Invalid partition
table" error and has continued to fail with that error every time.
I checked the BIOS setup and all of the drive devices -- in fact,
everything -- there was reporting correctly.
I booted with the Vista DVD and ran the repair function. It didn't find
anything wrong -- the log file shows all successful entries. That makes
sense because its not even getting through the bootup process to where it
would be trying to start windows.
While in the DVD, I ran the command box and was able to "CD" to all of the
drives and "DIR" all of the files and directories on them.
I remembered a FIXBOOT command on XP but there doesn't seem to be one, or an
equivalent, on Vista that I can find. In fact, I don't know what [DOS-like]
commands Vista does support from the DVD since "Help" itself is not found as
a command.
Thinking that I could just copy all of the files that I wanted to save on my
system disk [and then do an install of Vista] I tried a copy C:\*.* D:\*.*
but got an error telling me that wildcards were not allowed. The files that
I want to save (local mail files for MSN) are in the "Documents and
Settings" directory so I tried to go in there, thinking that I could just
copy them one at a time if I had to, but it gives me an error telling me
that access is denied.
I really don't want to lose either the data or current programs and
settings, but, of course, who does?
Is there a way that I can fix the boot record or partition table without
having to lose what's already on the disk?
