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Hard drive as if wondows is not installed

M

MilkyWay

Joined
Aug 16, 2007
Messages
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My pc is acting as if there is no OS even tho it is installed on the hard drive. NO bios setting are funny and nothing was changed, i got a random blue screen and when it restarted it went all funny.

I have tried the windows vista disk and tried to do a fixboot and fixmbr but there is no hard drive when you go to repair. And as such comand prompt is X: becasue it dosnt recognise the file system

It comes up tho when you go to reinstall it says 500gb drive 300gb used, if you search for a driver you can see that every file is there same as before.

The hard drive is fine and NO i am not going to simply reinstall.


How can i repair this. I have it set to just boot from hard drive and boot from boot from cd for second? No funny settings nothing its strange like :wtf:

Im on my back up pc btw. Yes i did google first for some help but i couldnt find anything.

EDIT: that should say WINDOWS in the title not WONDOWS argh!
 
Sounds like you have a bad master boot record. I believe Vista works the same as XP, so you put the Vista disc in and press R for the recovery console. Select repair MBR or Master Boot Record.
 
For the Vista recovery options, you need to get to the screen where it says, Install Windows, then in the bottom left there is an option to repair computer.
 
thats what i done and then you get a selection, but there is nothing so i cant do a comand prompt fixboot or fixmbr

auto dosnt do anything either, its as if windows isnt installed and its jsut a bunch of files

EDIT: want me to just take a pic with my mobile phone? its a lcd screen so it wont make any lines on the screen
 
Yeah, i dont get this X business
 
right it will take me 2 mins as i had the disk already booted at the install/repair screen
 
okay so here is what happens at boot, even tho i only selected to boot from HDD in the bios it begins to boot from CD, you get the usual no boot media thing

here are some screens for previous posts
 
Last edited:
If you get that insert system disk error then make sure the order of your hard drives have not changed themselves. Ive had that happen on a few occasions and it fixed my issue.
 
i might need to hijack the back up pc from my sister, she stole it from me so she didnt need to buy a new pc

this is the back up pc the other ones still at the repair screen

how about i just try a CMOS reset yeah futile but im fresh out of ideas

EDIT: wtf just happend it was if i posted 2 of the same message so i went to delete one and they both went

okay so yeah i have one only got one drive and its set to number 1
 
MilkyWay said:
seems like X: is the boot file system but its hidden and is about 30mb
Click to expand...

at the X: prompt use:

Bootrec.exe /fixMBR
Bootrec.exe /fixBoot
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Bootrec.exe /fixBoot

dosnt work going to restart and see if Bootrec.exe /fixMBR works
 
did not work will try something tomorrow need to get of this pc someone else wants to use it
 
erocker said:
at the X: prompt use:

Bootrec.exe /fixMBR
Bootrec.exe /fixBoot
Click to expand...
You can also try

fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0
or
See if you can change the directory first.
Type in: cd c:\
If it changes x: to c: then try to fix MBR or Boot.
Chkdsk may even find whats wrong and fix it.
 
okay i think i have it, i think the windows boot thingy was on the other disk so when i took the other hard drive out it you get the idea

i have no idea what caused the blue screen tho maybe thats to do with the other drive failing i guess cause thats why i had to remove it in the first place

i went and deleted the second drive from the boot config and selected bootlog and boot os info
it did some boot manger thing when i restarted the pc

hopefully when i remove the drive again it will be fine

think ill repair the boot manager while its in tho
 
easy bcd
im using that to fix this problem now i can get onto the OS with both drives
 
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