Putting vista on a new PC

[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.

Edited December 13, 2008 by eridani

[cluberti]

The new motherboard - is it using the same chipset as the old? If not, you're going to be SOL without running sysprep from the old machine.