Vista no longer boots

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Guest

I had a main disk with XP on it. I partioned it and installed Vista on the
new partition. I was ready to get rid of XP, so I used Partition Magic to
switch the active/system partition over to Vista. When it restarted, it gave
an error saying something about auotchk.exe missing, then XP no longer
started. I went into Vista and (stupidly) deleted the XP partition. After
restarting, I get what is dexcribed here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/155053

Here's what I've done:
bootsect - Applied the new GUID several times...I haven't been sure whether
I should be using the GUID for anything, since I can't find any really good
documentation on this tool
bootrec - Rebuilt the MBR and the BCD many times
rebuilt the BCD many times using bcdedit manually
fdisk /mbr
diskpart -Set the partition as active.

The Vista auto repair detects no problems. It identifies my Vista
installation correctly, and doesn't fix anything.

Any ideas?
 
The files you need to boot were on the partition that you eliminated. Now
you are going to have to perform a repair install to get everything back the
way it should be.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User
 
Just to clarify, you have one disk 0, two partitions, 1 & 2. Partition 1
had XP but is now empty (or is it deleted free space). Partition 2 is now
set active and has Vista on it but you get a black screen on boot.
You run Vista install disk and do a startup repair and it finds no problems.
Have you tried installing Vista to the partition 1 or freespace. What
version did you install and how did you install it 32 or 64 bit.
I have seen numerous posts here about Partition Magic destroying partitions.
Acronis and BootItNG seem to be the only ones that are Vista version of NTFS
compliant.
 
Yeah, that's all correct. What I originally wanted to do was merge the
partitions so that I could a) get rid of XP b) have a bigger system drive.
Home Premium 64bit is what I had installed.
Mostly I'm just trying to make it so I don't have to reinstall the programs
I have on my other drives (which all survived this mess). So, if I can
preserve the registry, it would be great. If not, I guess I'll deal with it.

If I install Vista to partition 1, would that correct the MBR and then allow
me to remove it and use the partition 2 Vista (after switching active
partition)?
 
In a BIOS system, the MBR only passes control to the boot record on the
active partition. The boot records there take over and determine what
system to boot.
It would seem worth a try to see if you could do what you suggested. The
posts from those who had used Partition Magic during the beta periods would
suggest the chances aren't all that good. So long as all you did with it
was to create freespace you may be ok. If you had any error message and
allowed it to correct it, I can't remember that scenario ever turning out
well. Good luck.
 
Hortnon--have you tried all the options at F8 (4 safe modes --->system
restore) and LKG?

CH
 
Well, I installed Vista in partition 1. From there I added the old Vista to
BCD, and was able to boot into it again. But, the drive letters switched, so
the old Vista didn't boot correctly since it was now on D: looking for its
files on C:. It allowed me to grab the registry keys I really cared about and
transfer them over, though, so it worked well enough. I have everything
running correctly now.

Thanks again for the help.
 
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