jlw2nd

Sorry to hear of your difficulty. If you cannot boot into your system I suspect that your only choice is to go back to factory settings and proceed from there. I realize that this will seem like locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen, but in order to avoid your quandry I have adhered to two unwavering procedures, and I recommend the first one unquestionably and some version of the 2nd as well: (1)Do not allow your machine to reboot on error; any error message on the BSD is then lost. The way to do this in Vista: Start>Control Panel>System and Maintenance>System Click Advanced System Settings and enter your UAC credentials to open System Properties dialog box with Advanced tab displayed. You will thus have access to Startup and Recovery options; in the System Failure section, uncheck "Automatically Restart". (Above instrux from "Microsoft Windows Vista Unleashed" by Paul McFedries; I have tried it and it works.) This is the first thing I do when setting up a new machine or re-installing the OS. If you are to see the text error messages on the BSD it is mandatory. (2)I use Acronis True Image (www.acronis.com) to make copies of any partitions on my hard drive, or the whole drive itself if there is only one partition, i.e. C:. Using an Acronis recovery CD and Acronis recovery archives created via regular backups means that I can recover from a catastrophic error such as the one you describe by inserting the CD, choosing partition restoration and pointing to the right recovery archive, usually on an external hard drive or 2nd hard drive within the machine if there is one. (This is not a commercial plug; I do not work for Acronis nor do I derive any benefit from recommending them. I have used their backup/recovery software for many years and it has saved me a lot of grief.) I am sorry to hear of the difficulty you have encountered; I wish I could think of another recovery method but if you cannot boot into your system I cannot see how you could do otherwise than to go back to square one. Good luck

Thank you for tip - I researched the topic further and found a link here: http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/showtopic26756.htm which, although citing some differences from my situation, provided me with enough information to derive a series of command line entries using bcdedit: bcdedit /export "C:\saveboot" bcdedit /create {ntldr} /d "Earlier Windows OS Loader" bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=C: bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlast bcdedit /set {ntldr} description "Microsoft Windows XP" (Note that for some reason when booting WinXP via the menu created above I must choose WinXP twice on 2 separate menus, although when booting Vista I need only choose once. This is a minor glitch which I hope to track down and fix shortly, as I remember seeing a post about that problem somewhere on the net.) When I established the menu, I found that choosing WinXP to boot to would not work - I kept getting a message about missing or corrupted boot files. I then found this posting: http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Trou...ting+Windows+XP by the neosmart folks in support of EasyBCD (which I did not employ) but which (1)told me of 3 files that must be in the root directory (C: usually) of the primary active partiion: boot.ini, ntldr, and NTDETECT.COM (2) gave links to copy the last two and (3) gave instructions as to the necessary contents of boot.ini, a text file. None of the three files are needed by Vista, hence their absence; they are, however, needed for Windows XP to boot successfully. At this point I have accomplished a successful dual boot situation (Visa/WinXP) and am in search of video drivers to improve the screen rendering in WinXP, which leaves something to be desired. I would not be surprised if other issues cropped up from time to time but the basic dual boot seems to be accomplished. Once again, thank you for your input.

Thank you for the link. I had seen it while researching the whole installation, although I ultimately went about the slipstreaming a bit differently, using a folder with both SATA AHCI drivers and ethernet NIC drivers specifically for the hardware in question. nLite is fairly intuitive once you get into it, actually - the trick was to find the correct drivers for the hardware involved. With the big push on to Vista, I doubt that mfrs want to maintain download sites for WinXP drivers. My only remaining issue now is to find a way to bring up a valid dual boot menu. I had WinXP functioning in its partition but cannot access it now as my laptop choked on the VisaBootPRO dual boot menu installation process and will either boot into Vista or emit an error message. I am going to have to research that for a bit, and perhaps find a different tool to enable the dual-boot process. Once I restore the original state (via Acronis True Image) the installation itself will be pretty cut-and-dried, as I have done it several times by now.

Here is the download URL: 32-bit floppy configuration utility Despite its name, the url will take you to a site which will allow download of f6flpy32_85.zip. When extracted, the drivers (and I included all modules extracted, not just .inf files) can be slipstreamed successfully and will permit WinXP use of SATA AHCI drive(s). Good luck.

(1)Install would fail without the drivers - always got to the point when Windows was starting setup and then, since access to the one and only hard drive is required at that point, died with BSOD. However: (2)After I posted the query below, Intel got back to me with download site and data for valid drivers needed for chipset/controller/hard drive and I successfully slipstreamed to the Windows XP Professional install files, and did the install. Just went in about an hour or so ago. My next task is finding ethernet network drivers for WinXP; much to my surprise I find that they are not included in install. I do not expect that to be too difficult, however (I hope). Many thanks for your response; sorry that I did not get a chance to post this information and save you the trouble of posting but only got the partition and system up and running a little while ago and have not yet even started the other installs I need to do on same. Sorry for any trouble - and thanks once again for your response.

I have an new HP Laptop running Vista Ultimate SP1 (alas): Computer: ACPI x64-based PC RAM: 4 GB 1 HD: TOSHIBA MK3252GSX ATA Device IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers: ATA Channels 0, 1, 4, 5 Intel ICH9M/M-E Family 4 Port SATA AHCI Controller - 2929 (driver problem with XP!!) Two processors: Intel Core2 Duo CPU T9600@2.8GHz Main use for machine at present is web programming course I am attending. I continually confront Vista issues and wish to install Windows XP Professional SP2 in separate partition, which I have created for the purpose. I am attempting to slip-stream the required drivers into the WinXP install software. I have complete Windows XP Professional retail install disk with SP2 which I copied to a separate folder on my hard drive. I downloaded and installed nLite version 1.4.9.1. I downloaded drivers alleged to be compatible with my hardware from www.versiontracker.com . The result was the result was INFUPDATE_8.3.1010.zip dated 9/25/2007 and which yielded a folder with many drivers when unzipped. I brought up nLite and pointed to the directory where I have copied the WinXP Pro install CD. On Task Selection screen I chose "Integrate Drivers" and "Create Bootable ISO". When asked for insertion file I pointed to the INFUPDATE_8.3.1010 folder, which holds all of the drivers that were unpacked. When the image is created I chose "Direct Burn" to produce a bootable CD. The image was created verified, and burned to create a bootable CD. It was burned at 10X, the slowest speed that the pulldown menu offerred. The CD thus produced was placed in the CD drive and the machine restarted, booting from CD. The install proceeded until this message appeared Setup is starting Windows followed by BSOD with this text: A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps: Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer. Technical information: *** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78D2524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000) It seems likely that either (1)I have not found correct drivers or (2)have not slipstreamed them properly. This is far as I have been able to progress. I have seen the post here in this nLite forum but it seems to involve a situation where WinXP has already been installed on a PC, not a slipstream/installation process. I am somewhat experienced with Windows etc. but some of the posts in this forum are admittedly over my head; I am not into hardware very much. If anyone has any idea how I might overcome this problem I would appreciate any information you can share. Thanks in advance.