Friends Windows Vista Home Premium won't boot to desktop

learninmypc

Posts: 9,659   +724
Vista Home Premium, I power it on & no matter the choice(s), it still will not go to the desk top.
I asked the owner when she last had it on & she told me about a week ago.
First thing I see is the Gateway screen with Boot menu F 10 & BIOS Settings F2.
Next screen shows Windows Boot Manager with 20 seconds to choose options.
One option says Windows Vista Home Premium (recovered)
Windows Error recovery is next screen & so on.
 
I don't know Vista that well, but for my friends sake, I hope not.
I was wondering if I used my webcam to make a short video of the (re)cycling it does, could I upload that to TS or not & would it be worth it? Thats what I meant in my first post by "& so on". Thanks for reply.
 
Disconnect the C hard drive and see if you get the familiar " no operating system found" with out the recycling
 
Ok, since I've never done that, I'd need very good step by step directions. I realize it may be simple to to others, but not to me, thank you.
 
This may be a bios setting too. To disconnect the hard drive, just unplug it's power cable and turn on the computer. You should see the "operating system missing" message after a time, with no recycling
 
Ok, I've got the side off & am attaching a picture of what I see. If I'm seeing this correctly, it has a white plug & a round black plug
 

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Yes those are SATA hard drives. The red connector is the data cable and the colored wires are the power connector. Just pull the red cable out. Looks like only one of the 2 hard drives is connected, is this correct?
 
Better picture. Yes both are attached and you can disconnect both (pull the red cables) and boot, then going back and attach one at a time and try booting
 
OK, I just found out the individual that uses this tower evidently uses the power on button to turn it off.
 
That could mean trouble to the boot drive, especially if he holds the power button till the computer shuts off. A momentary push is all that's needed to initiate proper shutdown. You have 2 drives. Which one is the C dive? Your last picture shows an Nvidia network boot manager, and that is normal with no boot device active. The master boot record on the C drive is corrupt and it can possibly be repaired using an Ultimate Boot disk. Check it out using Google search
 
I've removed the drive in the top portion & don't see if or where it says anything to do with C or D drive.HARDDRIVE.jpg
 
Are both hard drives the same size (in gigabytes) and model? If the bios will recognize the flash drive as a boot drive, yes you can use one to launch the UBCD... This is becoming a bit complicated for you, but it is a great learning experience :)
 
Yes,both are Western Digital, 500gb's.Model? Is that Caviar SE 16?
A bit complicated is an understatement :) . The first time & probably the last time:)
So, if I'm understanding this correctly, you want me to download something from that link to my flashdrive, put this Vista back together & boot it up ,then click on the BIOS =Basic Input Output System or setup & hopefully change the boot up option to boot from USB, shut it off & boot it back up in hopes it boots from the flashdrive?
I'm sure glad you know what I'm doing :)
 
Ok, I forgot to mention , prior to starting this thread I was going thru the options in the various menus that came up & amongst the many was the option to push F8 for Advanced option which I did & in there I did see an option to "repair disc".
No,I didn't try it because I knew it was unknown territory. Might that be an option or is yours better?
I'm only curious,but thought I'd ask first. And yes, I thank you for your help.(y)
 
Hi, Reading through this, it's completely possible that the Vista O/S has got a damaged/corrupted MBR, which you might be able to correct with the Ultimate boot disk, it's what it's for.
All you need to do is download it from the page given, it will be an .iso file. (zipped maybe).
Then you burn it to a CD.
Then you change the boot order in the BIOS to be 1) DVD drive 2)SATA 1.
Reboot the pc and the CD will run, (instead of Windows). You choose MBRrepair and follow that.
But as you have 2 identical hard drives, are you sure you are booting Windows Vista from the correct hard drive?
Look on the motherboard at where the SATA cables plug in, look for the printing on the board.
You will see a label near each socket. 'SATA1' & 'SATA2' (or JSATA1 & 2).
In the BIOS screen you should see the boot order as 'First ; Primary SATA' and that means the hard drive connected to the socket 'SATA1'. It may be the only way to tell the difference.
Then if you are not sure what is on the other hard drive, select that one in the BIOS and reboot.
Would be interesting to know if this PC was home made or built to order.
Hope this helps rather than confuses !!
 
Hi, Reading through this, it's completely possible that the Vista O/S has got a damaged/corrupted MBR, which you might be able to correct with the Ultimate boot disk, it's what it's for.
All you need to do is download it from the page given, it will be an .iso file. (zipped maybe).
Then you burn it to a CD.
Then you change the boot order in the BIOS to be 1) DVD drive 2)SATA 1.
Reboot the pc and the CD will run, (instead of Windows). You choose MBRrepair and follow that.
But as you have 2 identical hard drives, are you sure you are booting Windows Vista from the correct hard drive?
Look on the motherboard at where the SATA cables plug in, look for the printing on the board.
You will see a label near each socket. 'SATA1' & 'SATA2' (or JSATA1 & 2).
In the BIOS screen you should see the boot order as 'First ; Primary SATA' and that means the hard drive connected to the socket 'SATA1'. It may be the only way to tell the difference.
Then if you are not sure what is on the other hard drive, select that one in the BIOS and reboot.
Would be interesting to know if this PC was home made or built to order.
Hope this helps rather than confuses !!
Ok, mike1959 as I pointed out previously, I have no discs to download to or burn to. I just have a USB Verbatim HD with 367 gb's of free space.
Following the cables to the MotherBoard, the drive on the top is labled as SATA 1, the drive below it is SATA 2.
I believe this PC was bought at a store,not home built or custom made to my knowledge. ANY CD's that came with it were thrown away a few years ago. A mistake they won't repeat.
 
I'm guessing you're talking about this part?
Making UBCD memory stick
To create a bootable UBCD memory stick, at the command prompt, type:

cd \ubcd-extracted\ubcd\tools\win32\ubcd2usb
ubcd2usb c:\ubcd-extracted x:

where X: is that drive letter of USB memory stick, which is assumed to be already formatted. If it is not already formatted, or you wish to force it to be formatted, you can add the /f switch at the end:

ubcd2usb c:\ubcd-extracted x: /f

Either of the above will create a bootable UBCD memory stick in X:.
Note that booting a USB memory stick requires BIOS support and is only available on newer machines. You can also expect to encounter more compatibility issues compared to booting from a CD, and some tools may not work properly when run from a USB memory disk.
 
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