Find Which Drive Contains Boot?
Sep 27, 2009
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.
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Aug 31, 2008
hp tool ask to do this "Then please go to “using DOS system files” column and add the link to where you stored the unzipped DOS boot up files. "so my question is , where can i get the "dos boot up files" for vista64? with the hp tool i need to locate the dos boot file address . so how do i do that? do i have to download vista64 boot files? every google links explains how to do this with xp. couldnt find any for vista. makes me feel like im the only person on the planet using vista.
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Jul 1, 2008
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................
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Mar 23, 2008
I cloned my vista hdd today as I bought a larger drive. However when I boot up I get a can't find winloader.exe error. I dont have the Vista CD so cant repair it. How can I fix this new cloned hdd?
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Mar 26, 2008
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?
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May 15, 2008
I 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.
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Aug 22, 2008
Right 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...
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Mar 23, 2008
I 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?
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Mar 26, 2008
I have a PC running Vista Business. It will not successful run a repair, I do not find an option (when I boot from the cd) to wipe it out and reload the OS.
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Mar 23, 2008
I had an Vista 32 bit version installed and which was used fine.3 days before I had upgrade my PC's memory to 4G, then I find Vista 32 Bit version can not recognize all the memory.So I try to install an Vista 64 Bit version for the test to check if the 64 bit system is ok for me.
The problem is, Vista 32 was installed on to the 3rd partition of the harddisk,usually the drive letter will be E in Windows XP and previous version windows, although it in Vista it display as C drive. I tried to install the 64 Bit Vista in to the 4th partiton. After all the drivers and applications install completed,that seems so far so good. Then I find my previous F drive now names C. The Drive C in Vista 32 Bit names E now. When
I try to boot into Vista 32, the error message : winload.exe could not find.
I used bcdedit try to redirect the device and osdevice to E drive, Vista 32 still could not start normally, the system will hang up in the blue desktop background,seems can not load user profile or sth like that.
I have check the E drive, all the files of Vista 32 are still there.
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Feb 26, 2010
I have a Toshiba Satellite A215 laptop with FUJITSU MHY2250BH ATA device disc drive. When I go to 'My computer' the drive is there, as soon as I enter a game or a cd of any kind into the drive there is no auto play and the disc drive disappears completely from 'My Computer' I went to device manager and it is there, said its working properly. I tried to update drivers and it all up to date.
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Jun 1, 2008
I have a new computer with windows vista. I need to create a folder in the c drive but cannot find the c drive and do not know how to create a folder
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Apr 15, 2009
My System Spec:-
1) AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600
2) GIGABYTE GA-MA780G-UD3H
3) 4GB Memory DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
4) Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200AAJS 320GB Hard Drive
5) Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit for System
Builders - OEM
I have Update Bios
Bios detect the Hard Drive but when I install the OS and I reach this
point:-
?Where do you want to Install Windows? "
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Jul 3, 2009
I had gotten my new graphics card in the mail today and I was eager to install my new GTX 260 into my computer It is a very big card indeed well I got everything in order and I did not even go near my CD drive at all, But when I was finished I went to plug it back in it started up everything was fine, Now the automatic updates kicked in and I restarted my pc then I had my installation disk in the cd drive and nothing happened so I took it out and put in another disk and it was flashing green but then it stopped nothing is happening I went to my computer and it is not displayed there anymore, My friend said it had to do with some Bios default lockout for how many devices can be installed
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Feb 21, 2009
I thought I saw a post from someone who was having this same issue but couldn't find it. I am trying to check an ext hard drive for errors and when I try to "safely remove it" and keep getting the message that it is still in use when there is nothing using it, the light is steady. This happens for both my drives often. What gives?
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Jul 29, 2008
On first start up the comp couldnt find my dvd drive. Then after a few restarts it magicly found it. So Vista boots from disk, does all it should, then says to complete it needs to restart. there is only one restart in this whole precess. The drive im installing to have been formated, so its clean. So it restarts and pops up the screen to start the vista install all over again. Its not telling me to remove the disk while it does this, removed the disk when it restarted and all it said was boot error insert disk and press enter, or something to that effect. Now im noticeing after the many times its done this it takes a retarded amount of time to boot up and list my hard drives.
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Dec 25, 2008
Right 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).
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Mar 23, 2008
I am trying to do a clean install on a newly built system but Vista can not see my SATA hard drive. I have a Seagate 7200 barracuda 320 GB SATA HD and a Giga-byte P35 Mobo. Not knowing if it was a Vista issue or a hardware issue, I put in a XP installation disk and XP could recognize the drive. I stopped the install and tried loading some drivers off of the disk from Gigabyte. Vista still can not see the hard drive, but now when I throw the XP install disk back in, it can not see the hard drive either.
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Dec 27, 2008
I have -Dell XPS 730x with 6 GIG DDR3 RAM, Intel i7 64 bit Processor, 500 GIG disk,
I am running -Windows Vista Home Premium 64 which was preinstalled on the cpu
I want to -Dual boot between Vista64 and Windows XP32
So far -I have done everything to this machine from creating a virtual window in Vista64, to going into the command prompt from vista boot disk and running diskpart to clear hard drive.
I currently have -Two partitions on one disk. Primary 200GIG and Healthy 265GIG -Windows Vista Home Premium64 installed and running
The problems im having -every time try to boot from CD and run the windows xp setup, it is UNABLE to find ANY HARD DRIVES!
I have researched that
- I must have the disk partitioned
- Windows XP must be installed first
- I have to play with the boot.ini
- If i install vista32 it will be more successful
The errors I have gotten -STOP: 0x0000008E - i researched this and it said one option is to take out the excess RAM
I will be happy if - By the end of this weekend I can successfully run XP or both OS's in dual boot.
I need to go through all this trouble because - Digidesign has not written software for 64 bit proccessing yet. I need to make music.
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Nov 22, 2009
My laptop motherboard fried, so I removed the hard drive and purchased a caddy. When I plug the hard drive in to my new desktop PC I am able to see that only 4GB of the 100 GB capacity is available (as should be the case). However, I cannot see any of my files on there (folders I had created on the desktop etc.).
The only folders I can see are PerfLogs, Program Files, SwSetup, Users, Windows and two of my personal folders (both containing some photos). I really need to find the rest of my files as I have 12GBs of photos and videos of my baby boy on there, and would be gutted if I cannot access them again (for obvious reasons). Nothing else is important.
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Mar 31, 2009
My computer crashed and I currently have my hard drive set up externally to copy the information off of it onto another computer. I was using Windows Mail that came with Vista on my old computer when it crashed. I've been able to salvage my data, but would like to find my messages stored in my Inbox in Windows Mail. I cannot open the program (Windows Mail) currently, but will be able to open it when my new computer arrives. For now, I'm copying needed files off my hard drive and storing them temporarily on my children's computer. I do not know what folders from Windows Mail, or Windows perhaps, that I need to save in order to hopefully open my saved inbox messages.
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Apr 20, 2008
I'm trying to install an additional (SATA) hard drive - it appears I need a cable that can connect to the 8 pin power connection on the hard drive and then to the EIDE 15 pin connector on the cable coming from the hard drive in the computer. I can't find a cable that can do this. Do I need to combine two cables (15 to 4 pin, then 4 to 8?)
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Jun 6, 2008
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?
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Mar 28, 2009
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).
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Jun 1, 2008
Yesterday 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?
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Sep 19, 2009
I 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.
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Jul 1, 2008
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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Mar 23, 2008
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.
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Mar 23, 2008
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.....
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Jun 14, 2009
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?
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Jan 27, 2010
I 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.
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