Solve : weird windows booting problem?

1.	Solve : weird windows booting problem?
Answer» Today my computer got destroyed by a virus beyond the abilities of AVG free to counter. the virus came from a flash drive that a friend borrowed. I connected another computer hard drive that was running vista to my pc, and put my crucial FILES on the other hard drive. after the transfer completed, I reinstalled windows XP on my hard drive without disconnecting the other hard drive. the installation seemed to work, but after I disconnected the other hard drive from my computer, I got this message when the computer restarted: "Boot failure press any key to continue" pressing a button just made the message appear again a little lower on the screen. I put the other hard drive back in my computer, and when it started the computer booted xp with no problem. in the boot order menu, if I selected the hard drive that xp is installed on, I got the boot failure message. the vista hard drive still had all of its files on it. when I try to boot the vista drive by itself I get a message something like this: "windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration Problem. Could not read for the selected boot disk. check boot path and disk hardware." then some stuff about windows hardware documentation and hardware reference manuals. as far as I could tell the boot path was correct. I don't know much about BIOS and that kind of THING, but general problems I've usually been able to fix. any help would be appreciated. at this point the main goal is to get the vista computer working again. my (probably incorrect) theory is that the boot information of the two drives somehow got tangled together and are now inoperable separate from each other. that's a guess though. Help!I don't see how Windows setup would install the system files onto two separate hard drives. It seems like you accidentally installed XP onto a partition that resides on the Vista drive... You probably weren't paying close attention when you selected which partition/drive to install XP onto.. Which could mean that you wiped out your files that you tried to save. Have you checked the Vista drive to see if your "saved" files are still intact? Does Vista even exist on that drive anymore? Can the drive be booted into Vista? How many partitions exist on the "Vista" drive? Do the installation again with the Vista drive disconnected.Never ever do an install with two drives in the system unless you have a COMPELLING reason and you have 100% backups.Use the Vista CD and run a Repair on the Vista installation. with XP use the recovery console and fixboot/fixmbr. Quote from: Geek-9pm on March 10, 2010, 01:33:24 AM Never ever do an install with two drives in the system unless you have a compelling reason and you have 100% backups. Huh? Every computer I own has multiple hd's. Are you suggesting I should have removed one before installing the OS? Quote from: EEVIAC on March 09, 2010, 10:58:25 PM Do the installation again with the Vista drive disconnected. I actually meant this only as a way to help you be less confused about which partition to select, when doing the installation. But then again, we'll wait and see what you post back with.. Quote from: Allan on March 10, 2010, 05:43:21 AM Huh? Every computer I own has multiple hd's. Are you suggesting I should have removed one before installing the OS? I should have said that it only applies to those with less that 2 years of experience with installs. But some authors the recommends install with only one HID present, then add the other drive and power up again.I made sure that the hard drive I installed on was the correct one. in the partition selection screen it shows the size of the drives, the xp being 1/2 TB and the vista being 1/4 TB. there wasn't any confusion because it also shows the drive number, and I physically read the drive numbers off of the back of the drives to MAKE sure I was installing on the correct one. I talked to the school computer technician and he says that I'd need both boot disks to run a boot repair on both drives. details explaining this process would be appreciated, and if any simpler solutions exist, please notify me.

Answer»

Today my computer got destroyed by a virus beyond the abilities of AVG free to counter. the virus came from a flash drive that a friend borrowed. I connected another computer hard drive that was running vista to my pc, and put my crucial FILES on the other hard drive. after the transfer completed, I reinstalled windows XP on my hard drive without disconnecting the other hard drive. the installation seemed to work, but after I disconnected the other hard drive from my computer, I got this message when the computer restarted:
"Boot failure
press any key to continue"
pressing a button just made the message appear again a little lower on the screen. I put the other hard drive back in my computer, and when it started the computer booted xp with no problem. in the boot order menu, if I selected the hard drive that xp is installed on, I got the boot failure message. the vista hard drive still had all of its files on it. when I try to boot the vista drive by itself I get a message something like this:
"windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration Problem. Could not read for the selected boot disk. check boot path and disk hardware." then some stuff about windows hardware documentation and hardware reference manuals.
as far as I could tell the boot path was correct. I don't know much about BIOS and that kind of THING, but general problems I've usually been able to fix. any help would be appreciated. at this point the main goal is to get the vista computer working again. my (probably incorrect) theory is that the boot information of the two drives somehow got tangled together and are now inoperable separate from each other. that's a guess though. Help!I don't see how Windows setup would install the system files onto two separate hard drives. It seems like you accidentally installed XP onto a partition that resides on the Vista drive... You probably weren't paying close attention when you selected which partition/drive to install XP onto.. Which could mean that you wiped out your files that you tried to save. Have you checked the Vista drive to see if your "saved" files are still intact? Does Vista even exist on that drive anymore? Can the drive be booted into Vista? How many partitions exist on the "Vista" drive?

Do the installation again with the Vista drive disconnected.Never ever do an install with two drives in the system unless you have a COMPELLING reason and you have 100% backups.Use the Vista CD and run a Repair on the Vista installation.

with XP use the recovery console and fixboot/fixmbr.

Quote from: Geek-9pm on March 10, 2010, 01:33:24 AM

Never ever do an install with two drives in the system unless you have a compelling reason and you have 100% backups.

Huh? Every computer I own has multiple hd's. Are you suggesting I should have removed one before installing the OS? Quote from: EEVIAC on March 09, 2010, 10:58:25 PM

Do the installation again with the Vista drive disconnected.

I actually meant this only as a way to help you be less confused about which partition to select, when doing the installation. But then again, we'll wait and see what you post back with.. Quote from: Allan on March 10, 2010, 05:43:21 AM

Huh? Every computer I own has multiple hd's. Are you suggesting I should have removed one before installing the OS?

I should have said that it only applies to those with less that 2 years of experience with installs. But some authors the recommends install with only one HID present, then add the other drive and power up again.I made sure that the hard drive I installed on was the correct one. in the partition selection screen it shows the size of the drives, the xp being 1/2 TB and the vista being 1/4 TB. there wasn't any confusion because it also shows the drive number, and I physically read the drive numbers off of the back of the drives to MAKE sure I was installing on the correct one.
I talked to the school computer technician and he says that I'd need both boot disks to run a boot repair on both drives. details explaining this process would be appreciated, and if any simpler solutions exist, please notify me.

Solve : weird windows booting problem?

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