I have Vista installed on my computer but, I want to update my bios for my motherboard and would like a create a bootable USB drive to do this instead of using a floppy drive. Does anyone know if this would work and if so how would I create the startup drive?
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I am attempting to flash bios in my DFI board. DFI site says for vista 64 users to create usb bootable disk and flash from there. I have flashed from floppy many times without any problems. They recommend using "HP usb formatting tool". Searching this I came across a thread in this forum I downloaded the tool and win98 boot and folowed the instructions on this page. My usb flash stick was successfully formatted, but the boot files were not installed. The stick shows empty. I have tried several times with the same results. Reason for flashing: I am having memory issues with my, and DFI tech recommended flashing to 1-29-09 version which addresses memory related issues. Off topic comment: Werent we making progress at flashing bios through Windows in XP?
View 9 Replies View Relatedi'm using a dell m1530. i was wondering if i can do a dual boot. both partition running vista. the reason being i'd like to have one partition for leisure stuff...and the second for my work (i'm music programmer, so i wanna tweak vista as minimum as possible). if this is possible, can i use the same vista cd to install separately on both partition...oh man, i hope i made sense... :geek:so new to vista! still not used to it... p/s; i've been told about tweaking user profiles as well... can it be done? i'd like to have no internet etc. on my work partition
View 4 Replies View RelatedTwo of us have been searching for hours (forums, newsgroups, google) on how to create more then 4 partitions in on the same drive in Vista. We understand you can't have any more then 4 primary partitions. Here is how the Dell M1530 XPS came preconfigured as:
Partition 1 = OEM (Dell Utilities)
Partition 2 = Primiary (Dell Recovery)
Partition 3 = Primary (C Drive with Vista)
Partition 0 = Extended
Partition 4 = Logical
NOTE: Partition 0 or 4 is for Dell Media Direct. The volumes are:
Volume 0 E DVD-ROM
Volume 1 D Recovery
Volume C OS
Partition 3 is 220GB in size. I want to shrink it to 60GB's. This would leave about 160GB as Unallocated that I want to format and assign a drive letter to (a Volume I guess). We've also played around with DiskPart a lot, so we're pretty familiar with it, although not experts. All of the instructions on the web are the same, as none of them work with more then 4 partitions of any type.
I've had Vista x64 installed for about 2 full months now and I've recently begun having a lot of problems. One being: 187 seconds. What the hell? Before you ask, here are my specs. Lots of fast memory, a fast processor, 7200RPM boot drive (not listed), and ****ing awful performance. What gets me is that the delayed boot time is before I even see the "Welcome" screen.
My current boot time distribution:
1. BIOS does all its fancy stuff very quickly (about 6-7 seconds or so)
2. I get to my boot loader and it defaults to Vista after 5 seconds (dual-booting Vista/Ubuntu).
3. I then see the Vista loading screen (black screen with green loading bar) for about 4-5 seconds................
I've upgraded my machine at some point in the last year, where I added a new 500GB drive and moved my C: partition across to it. The previous 250GB drive was left in for additional storage. Just recently (while upgrading my BIOS) I realised that my system was still booting from the 250GB drive even though Windows was on the other disk. There is a fair possibility in the not too distant future that I'll replace the 250GB disk with a larger disk, in which case I won't be able to boot. Is there a safe and reliable way to change it so that the system boots from the 500GB disk?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI am trying a new install on a new machine. I have 2 WD 250 GB drives (not in RAID config). When VISTA installs it tells me the first drive is not recognized as boot drive and won't load. I tried to install on second drive and get a error message about a volume does not meet VISTA criteria (or something like that)and won't install. These are both brand new drives. Both drives are correctly identified in the BIOS.
View 7 Replies View RelatedRight now i am booting off of an 80gb IDE hard drive but i want to clone the drive onto a 150gb sata drive and make the sata drive my boot drive. I have used Acronis True Image to clone the hard drive. I restarted and everything copied over in DOS successfully but then i tried to boot off of the sata drive and everything seemed to work out fine.. Vista load bar showed up, i was able to enter my password to log in and then it said preparing desktop like it was the first time i installed vista. It was stuck on that screen for a few mins and then a blank blue screen just came up. it seemed like it was the default background for Windows 2000 or something like that and it just stayed there. So now i'm back to booting off of the IDE drive...
View 5 Replies View RelatedI have a dual boot system: XP PRO on drive C and Vista Home Premium on drive B. I want to replace my hardrive, and move (or clone) Vista to new drive and be it C drive. Vista is still virgin and not other programs are installed, so changing it location from D to C drive will not influance any applications. I know how to create hard drive image. My question is how to make that new c drive with Vista on it bootable again. Is there any utility I can use?
View 4 Replies View RelatedRight now I have a single 640 gig HDD that everything's on. I've got a laptop too that I'm gonna be taking out on rotations eventually. I wanted to get a new smaller (250GB) HDD and put my Vista on that, so my 640 will be data only (then I could take it with me in an external enclosure and leave the desktop for my mom to use til I come back and collect it). I was gonna DBAN the 640, but I wanted to get the data off of it first- about 170 GB of stuff that I'd rather not lose.
My question is-
Can I install Vista on the smaller drive, boot with that, and access files on the other drive? Would it work if there's another Vista running on the other drive? (both SATA).
I bought a new pc for my work which has all the bells and whistles. Of course the kids want access to the pc so that they can play the latest games. I prefer not to install any games on the pc. I have a couple of
licenses for both Vista Ultimate and XP Pro. Is there any way to install either Vista or XP on a USB drive and install their games on that. When they want to play, they can just boot their drive off USB, making use of the hardware on my pc?
I got a new system (AMD Athlon Dual Core, 3GHz, Vista Home Premium, 500GB SATA HDD), installed a new SATA drive (250GB), and installed WinXP on the new drive (I undid all the cable to the Vista drive first). Now, I can boot off Vista or XP, but the default system is XP. I have to go to the Boot menu to bring Vista up. Is there a way to set the Vista drive as the default drive? Can I simply switch the drive cables? The jumpers no longer do Master/Slave, so I'm not sure on this. (BTW, when I boot up in Vista, and use a boot up controller program like Easy BCD, it does not show XP as a boot option).
View 5 Replies View RelatedYesterday morning Vista, wouldn't boot I was promped to use safe mode, last known good configuration etc. Would not start in safe mode or last known good configuration. I finally got the repair from CD to corme up ran repair after 30 minutes or so got message found 0 problems 0 fixed scrool down for details reasion repair failed couldn't find C drive. I later got into safe mode and opened Excel trying to save a work book. couldn't save anthing from safe mode Hard drive light is on. how to boot from C on hard drive?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI have 3 HDDs in my PC (don't ask why!). The boot/system drive is connected to SATA port 0 and is set in the BIOS as the first boot device. When I run the Windows Vista install DVD, I get a different HDD as 'Drive 0', the device I want as the Boot/system drive is set as 'Drive 2'. The only way I can install to Drive 0 is to disconnect the other two drives prior to installing.
This wasn't a problem with Vista RTM disc, but since SP1 I've had this problem. And the same now with Windows 7! Strange problem, any ideas? It's not the end of the world but a weird problem all the same.
I have two hard drive on the same pc. XP on the c drive. I attempted to install Vista on the second drive (300G partitioned to 200 and 100 G with vista on the former). upon rebooting I got a message from windows boot manager saying the File:windowssystem32winload.exe is missing with a status: 0xc000000e.
So, another reboot I get the choice of Earlier version of window or Microsoft windows vista. clicking on the former brings me to the screen with win xp logo and stays there without any futher move. Clicking on the vista it circles back to the same page. Now I can't even get to my XP.
I have 3 Different Windows operating systems on one computer that are across 2 separate hard drives. My PROBLEM:
I need guidance as to how to find which drive contains the boot info as well as how to change AND move the Master Boot Record.
Tools currently at my disposal:
1) 2 blank 640gig HD's that I can install if anything needs to be shuffled around.
2) Acronis True Image 2009 that can add or clone disk as well as pretty flexible backup options.
3) System Mechanic 8 which I believe can boot from CD and be used to configure HD's
4) Nero 8 if I need to burn any .ISO boot disks.
5) I only have the Vista 64 bit disk available - the other disks were puppy food.
i am running Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit on a custom built PC (Info at bottom). The problem is that there was an issues with the PC and some OS files were corrupted causing problems with Vista. I have tried to load the vista install boot DVD to do a system restore or a clean install of vista but for some reason it cannot boot from the dvd drive. Now i have tried everything i can think of. I have changed the priorities of the boot devices so it boots the DVD drive first however it seems to just ignore it. the drive powers up and reads and whatnot but it doesnt boot the cd it just loads from the HD.
When i remove all the boot list items and leave just the DVD drive as the boot option i get a screen saying insert boot media/disk and press any key to continue. Upon doing that the message just appears again. I have checked the hardware. everythings connected properly and tightly. I even stripped the system down to only the Mobo, CPU, Video Card, HD and dvd drive are in and still nothing. I have installed Vista from this cd on another machine and on 2 different hard drives in this machine in the past. 1 install was about a week ago. i have even tried using a windows XP boot disk and still it doesnt boot from the dvd drive. The DVD drive works perfectly with no problems when the OS is running. I can read and burn cd/dvd and play music and games on it. Recognizes it as a vista install disk as well when the os is running.....
i wish everything was as easy as they say. Insert your windows vista CD and go from there. My problem is that my PC will neither boot from CD or Floppy Drive. i can to rebuild the bootmgr?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have vista Pro on a software raid and and mow installing a larger hardware raid card. What is the best software to clone my old drives onto the new ones, without errors or errors on system files? If it's freeware, that's great. Please bear in mind that if the solution involves rebooting to a DVD, then it will have to load the RAID driver in order to see the source drives.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI got my laptop with Windows Home Premium x32. When I upgraded it to Ultimate, now whenever I start up my laptop, it always starts out by showing the HP logo, then it says, "Resetting boot drive...." then a bunch of other crap afterwards.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI have a dual boot system - XP on the boot drive and Vista on a slave drive. The boot drive is failing (clicking on boot and often preventing the computer from passing the bios splash screen). The Vista install modified the boot header on the XP boot drive. This means that I cannot just buy a new boot drive and install XP on it because the boot information allowing for dual boot will need to be re-written to it. How do I do this?
Is it possible for me to make a backup of the dual boot information installed by Vista so that when I replace the boot drive I can copy at least some parts of the information to the boot drive? Will I have to reinstall both XP and Vista on the slave drive? It has taken me ages to get a stable Vista install on the legacy mobo and I have finally managed it - I wouldn't want to reinstall Vista from scratch
just because the boot drive which contains XP and the dual boot information is dying.
I've configured my system to dual boot into Vista64 (OEM) and Vista86 (retail) on the same drive - 2 separate partitions in a raid 0 configuration.
Vista64 partition: is used exclusively for music recording with 64 bit software only - yes they do exist, I use Sonar.
Vista 86 partition: is for general computer use: Internet, email and such.
I understand that vista64 runs both 64 and 32 bit applications well enuf, I simply want to keep both uses apart from one another - thus my reason for a dual boot.
... so here's my question :^) Has anyone done this before, on a raid 0 using two instances of Vista? If so, could you tell me how well it's worked for you?
...also, concerning the "pagefile.sys". Since I have both vista's on the same drive in separate partitions and vista doesn't like running two pagefiles on the same drive. Should I move one to a second drive? If so, which should I move the x64 or the x86. Maybe both, eh?
I have a "storage" drive (seagate sata 3.0gb, 320gb) with lots of files which was previously used (as a storage drive) with my xp pro 32 install, and after that, with my linux system via fuse+ntfs-3g. This drive is mountable in linux still, and all files appear to be intact. I would like to share this storage drive between my dual boot Vista
Ultimate/Debian Etch (both 64) system, but if it is connected while trying to boot vista, vista will stop after the "loading" screen, and rest eternally on a black screen, before any welcome logo or logon screen.Without this drive connected, vista boots fine. Without my linux drive connected, and with the storage drive connected, vista still will not boot. Vista even sees my linux drive and all its partitions, but will not boot
with the storage drive attached. I've tried booting and *then* connecting the drive, but it doesn't show up anywhere at all (my computer, device manager, disk management).I've searched EVERYWHERE for the last several months (ever since i bought vista near the end of september '07) and have found absolutely Zero clues as to why this is happening or how to fix it.
I am planning on putting ubuntu on an external hard drive. If I install Ubuntu on it, can I boot to it? I don't want to change any settings in bios, I just want to boot to ubuntu occasionally.
View 8 Replies View RelatedDoes anyone have experience using a solid state disk as Vista boot drive? From what I've been reading an SATA SSD boots much faster than the fastest spinning disk and is clearly much more reliable. The 32GB SSD's are not that expensive now and I'm thinking a system with an SSD boot drive and reasonably fast hard drive for swap, temp, logs, etc. might be a stellar performer. There are some caveats with SSD's though: they have slow write speeds so you need to disable/relocate as much write activity as possible. Also, SSD's have a finite number of write cycles they can perform, but with moving most of the write activity to a HD their lifetime seems to exceed even the best mechanical drive.
View 4 Replies View RelatedA complete computer backup (80 GB hard drive running Vista Ultimate) was done to an external USB (Maxtor 500GB). To do a complete restore, is there a way to have the USB drive recognized as a boot up device or does this type of restore have to be done through DVD?
View 4 Replies View RelatedAnyone had any experience bypassing BitLocker (basic mode) using the recovery console (i.e., booting to the Windows DVD or rescue CD)? Based on the documentation, seems like it would work (provided BIOS is configured to boot to CD/DVD drive before the HDD). Having said that, would M$ allow such an obvious attack vector? I don't have a machine w/ a TPM right now, so I can't test this myself.
View 4 Replies View Relatedi am running Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit on a custom built PC (Info at bottom). The problem is that there was an issues with the PC and some OS files were corrupted causing problems with Vista. I have tried to load the vista install boot DVD to do a system restore or a clean install of vista but for some reason it cannot boot from the dvd drive. Now i have tried everything i can think of. I have changed the priorities of the boot devices so it boots the DVD drive first however it seems to just ignore it. the drive powers up and reads and whatnot but it doesnt boot the cd it just loads from the HD. When i remove all the boot list items and leave just the DVD drive as the boot option i get a screen saying insert boot media/disk and press any key to continue. Upon doing that the message just appears again. I have checked the hardware. everythings connected properly and tightly. I even stripped the system down to only the Mobo, CPU, Video Card, HD and dvd drive are in and still nothing.
I have installed Vista from this cd on another machine and on 2 different hard drives in this machine in the past. 1 install was about a week ago. i have even tried using a windows XP boot disk and still it doesnt boot from the dvd drive. The DVD drive works perfectly with no problems when the OS is running. I can read and burn cd/dvd and play music and games on it. Recognizes it as a vista install disk as well when the os is running. The Bios recognizes all the devices connected to it as well (HD, CPU, DVD drive, etc) I am just stumped as to what it could be.
I've configured my system to dual boot into Vista64 (OEM) and Vista86 (retail) on the same drive - 2 separate partitions in a raid 0 configuration. Vista64 partition: is used exclusively for music recording with 64 bit software only - yes they do exist, I use Sonar. Vista 86 partition: is for general computer use: Internet, email and such. I understand that vista64 runs both 64 and 32 bit applications well enuf, I simply want to keep both uses apart from one another - thus my reason for a dual boot.... so here's my question :^) Has anyone done this before, on a raid 0 using two instances of Vista? If so, could you tell me how well it's worked for you? ...also, concerning the "pagefile.sys". Since I have both vista's on the same drive in separate partitions and vista doesn't like running two pagefiles on the same drive. Should I move one to a second drive? If so, which should I move the x64 or the x86. Maybe both,
View 5 Replies View RelatedIssue: Its seen that computer having a samsung hard drive of 320 GB and 500 GB will give black screen with a cursor at the top left corner and it wont boot.
The reason behind this is these hard drives contains a scanner inside them which periodically scans the hard drive to check for error and tries to recover them.
Resolution: Enter the Boot device menu(By pressing the F12 or F9 key on the manufacturer logo).
Change the Boot Device
Select HARD DRIVE as the 1st boot priority and press enter. The system may or may not boot...
I searched all over and I haven't found a solution, but I know there has to got to be way to do this. I shrank my XP 64 partition and booted from the Vista 64 disk and installed on the unallocated space.
Everything works except:
When I boot into Vista 64 my XP 64 partition is drive D:, how do I change the XP partition to any letter but D:? D: has all my data (when booted into XP 64).
I've read that it can't be done, but there has got to be a way, if I
had a 3 partition triple boot one of those partitions would be something
other than D.
