Hi all! I'm New to this forum and Vista and hope you fine people can
help. I bought a rig second hand. The silly fellow forgot to wipe out
his previous install of Vista. The rig came with one 250gb (D and one
80gb (C SATA HD's. I backed up quite a bit of info to the 80gb drive
for use later. I placed the Vista Home Premium disc in, formated the
larger (D drive and installed Vista. Everything seemed ok until it was
time to reboot without the Vista disc. I get a NO BOOT MANAGER FOUND
error after any restart. If i let it boot from Vista Disc, Windows works
fine. From looking at a few tech forums, I believe Vista installed the
boot manager to the wrong HD. When I tried using the Vista System
Recovery tools, It shows windows being installed on drive (D. Using
the Vista disc to boot and looking at my desktop it shows Windows
installed on (C!!! I'm not computer illiterate but I need someone to
walk me thru this one like I am...
>
> Hi all! I'm New to this forum and Vista and hope you fine people can
> help. I bought a rig second hand. The silly fellow forgot to wipe out
> his previous install of Vista. The rig came with one 250gb (D and one
> 80gb (C SATA HD's. I backed up quite a bit of info to the 80gb drive
> for use later. I placed the Vista Home Premium disc in, formated the
> larger (D drive and installed Vista. Everything seemed ok until it was
> time to reboot without the Vista disc. I get a NO BOOT MANAGER FOUND
> error after any restart. If i let it boot from Vista Disc, Windows works
> fine. From looking at a few tech forums, I believe Vista installed the
> boot manager to the wrong HD. When I tried using the Vista System
> Recovery tools, It shows windows being installed on drive (D. Using
> the Vista disc to boot and looking at my desktop it shows Windows
> installed on (C!!! I'm not computer illiterate but I need someone to
> walk me thru this one like I am...
>
>
> --
> Necrophobic
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Necrophobic's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/members/necrophobic.htm
> View this thread: http://forums.techarena.in/vista-set...ll/1024660.htm
>
> http://forums.techarena.in
>
>
On Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:02:21 +0530, Necrophobic
<Necrophobic.3eic3a@DoNotSpam.com> wrote:
>
>Hi all! I'm New to this forum and Vista and hope you fine people can
>help. I bought a rig second hand. The silly fellow forgot to wipe out
>his previous install of Vista. The rig came with one 250gb (D and one
>80gb (C SATA HD's. I backed up quite a bit of info to the 80gb drive
>for use later. I placed the Vista Home Premium disc in, formated the
>larger (D drive and installed Vista. Everything seemed ok until it was
>time to reboot without the Vista disc. I get a NO BOOT MANAGER FOUND
>error after any restart. If i let it boot from Vista Disc, Windows works
>fine. From looking at a few tech forums, I believe Vista installed the
>boot manager to the wrong HD. When I tried using the Vista System
>Recovery tools, It shows windows being installed on drive (D. Using
>the Vista disc to boot and looking at my desktop it shows Windows
>installed on (C!!! I'm not computer illiterate but I need someone to
>walk me thru this one like I am...
Run Vista's Disk Management, and identify which disk contains the
System partition. If it's on the 250GB drive, then go into BIOS setup
and set the BIOS to boot from that drive.
If the system partition is on the 80GB drive, mark the primary
partition on the 250GB drive as active, disconnect the 80GB drive
cable, and follow steps 2 through 15 at
<http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windows.vista.general/browse_thread/thread/a434fb8e883bfe76/e44fccdac924c871?hl=en&lnk=st&q=#e44fccdac924c871> .
Ignore any references to Windows XP.
After reconnecting the 80GB drive, go into BIOS setup and set the BIOS
to boot from the 250GB drive.
Many users overlook a couple of key points of installing Vista (and
Win2K/XP, too).
First, no matter where we "install Vista", the few startup files will ALWAYS
go into the partition that is designated in the BIOS as the boot device at
the time Setup is run. So if the 80 GB HD was Disk 0 and designated as the
boot device, that's where the startup files would be written, even if you
specified that Vista was to be installed on a partition on the 250 GB
connected as Disk 1 at the time. This behavior has not changed since at
least Win2K (and WinNT before that, I think). If the 80 GB was disconnected
at Setup time, then those files could not be written there, so they would
have gone to what you called "the wrong HD". Then, when you plugged in the
80 GB again, the BIOS couldn't find those files because they were not on the
80. Unless we install Vista (or WinXP) to that first partition on the first
HD, Setup will always have to split the installation into two partitions:
the few startup files onto the boot device and all those GB of other files
into the \Windows folder on the "boot volume" where we tell Setup to install
the operating system.
The second point is the meaning of "system volume" and "boot volume". The
definitions are counterintuitive - they are opposite from common usage of
the terms. As many writers have said, "We BOOT from the SYSTEM partition
and install the operating SYSTEM files into the BOOT volume." See:
Definitions for system volume and boot volume http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314470/EN-US/
Another point is that Vista has changed the default letter assignments
sequence. WinXP and prior generally assigned the letter C: to the System
Partition, almost always the first active primary partition on the first HD.
Vista assigns C: to its own "Boot Volume" - see the definition in KB314470,
above - which is wherever we tell Setup to install Vista. In your case,
it's the first partition on that second HD, but it could be ANY primary
partition or logical drive on ANY HD in the computer. After assigning C:,
Vista then starts over - usually with the System Volume on the first HD -
with the next letter, so the System Volume usually will be assigned D:.
When there is only one HD with only one partition, all this is moot. But
when there are multiple HDs with multiple partitions and with multiple OSes
installed - or being installed - it can get very confusing!
When we start dual-booting, we must remember that each OS has its own
Registry and has no idea what letters another OS may have assigned to the
exact same partition. The first partition on the first HD may be Drive C:
when we are running WinXP, and Drive D: when we reboot into Vista. When we
boot from the Vista DVD to run Setup, Vista's boot volume will always be
Drive C:, no matter where it is or what WinXP might call it. But by first
booting into WinXP and assigning letters, then running Vista's Setup.exe
from inside WinXP, we can put Vista's boot volume into Drive V: if we want
to, and make it Drive V: in both Vista and WinXP. That takes more planning
than most users care to do.
As KB314470 says, so far as Vista (or WinXP) is concerned, there is only one
System Partition for the whole computer. But there's nothing to stop us
from disconnecting Disk 0 while leaving Disk 1 connected, then booting from
the Vista DVD a second time and "repairing" Disk 1, thus creating a second
System Partition on that HD. Then, connect Disk 0 again for normal
operation. Update each set of startup files to point to the proper
location(s) of the boot volume(s). Then if the system partition on Disk 0
gets corrupted, just tell the BIOS to boot from Disk 1. ;<)
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1)
"Necrophobic" <Necrophobic.3eic3a@DoNotSpam.com> wrote in message
news:Necrophobic.3eic3a@DoNotSpam.com...
>
> Hi all! I'm New to this forum and Vista and hope you fine people can
> help. I bought a rig second hand. The silly fellow forgot to wipe out
> his previous install of Vista. The rig came with one 250gb (D and one
> 80gb (C SATA HD's. I backed up quite a bit of info to the 80gb drive
> for use later. I placed the Vista Home Premium disc in, formated the
> larger (D drive and installed Vista. Everything seemed ok until it was
> time to reboot without the Vista disc. I get a NO BOOT MANAGER FOUND
> error after any restart. If i let it boot from Vista Disc, Windows works
> fine. From looking at a few tech forums, I believe Vista installed the
> boot manager to the wrong HD. When I tried using the Vista System
> Recovery tools, It shows windows being installed on drive (D. Using
> the Vista disc to boot and looking at my desktop it shows Windows
> installed on (C!!! I'm not computer illiterate but I need someone to
> walk me thru this one like I am...
>
>
> --
> Necrophobic
Vista "Boot Manager Missing" 
and one
Linear Mode
