eridani

Hi all. One of my friends asked me to build her a computer, since her old one was toast (either the mobo or CPU was dead). Ok, so, I got all the parts, and used her old hard drive (which still works), seeing how Vista was already installed on it. I know Windows doesn't like switching hardware, but in the past I usually didn't have a problem getting it running again. This time, however, it refuses to cooperate. When I first started it, I got this Vista Dialog to either restore the system or reinstall Vista (which would format the hard drive), I tried to restore it, but no luck. After that, I got the "BOOTMGR is missing. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart" message. I downloaded the Vista recovery cd (which as far I know is legal, as I think MS released it), and worked from there. Selected the option to repair the startup also with no luck. So I started the console, and typed in "xcopy e:\bootmgr c:" to copy the file, and then "robocopy e:\boot c:\boot /mir" to copy the whole boot folder, as that seemed to be where the issue was. Everything was copied, but now I'm getting a black screen that says: ::Vague instructions:: File: \Boot\BCD Status: 0xc0000098 Info: The windows boot configuration data file does not contain a valid os entry. I tried the repair install again, and when it failed I looked at the diagnostic report. It said "OS files not found" or something. Did Vista somehow delete itself? My friend bought her computer from a company called "Cisnet" (that's what it said on her old case), so I'm assuming she didn't get a whole Vista re-installation disk...not that she can find it anyway Anyway, if there's any suggestions to get Vista running again, I'd be appreciative. Thanks in advance. Minor update: Looking through the computer's files on the Recovery disk, the Windows files are clearly there, but there's 3 partitions: Local, Recovery, and Boot. I tried copying the boot files to the Boot partition, but still getting the same message.

Hi everybody. Just found this forum, and it looks awesome! Well, anyway, see you on the forums!