Recover Vista MBR

[bonzai10]

I have 2xHDD.

1st has Win XP installed and is ATA 100 HDD

2nd has Vista installed and is SATA 150 HDD

One with XP works fine. Unless i connect 2nd HDD. Then i have to connect 1st to Primary Slave (Usually is connected to Primary Master). When I connect Both HDDs and 1st is on PS (Primary Slave) it screwes. I dont.. well didn't know that Vista will install BOOTMGR on my windows xp disk and now when i connect SATA HDD Vista wont BOOT.

My point is can i restore MBR on SATA HDD ? The trouble is that when i boot install DVD and im attempting to fix something, installer won't see Vista instalation.

I want to restore or obtain requred files to get Vista MBR fixed. I know how to fix XP mbr but i want to get those drives to work separatly sa well as together. I dont want to plug SATA HDD to other SATA channel, i just want that above.

I have Vista build 5600 x64

Thanx in advance.

I thought about installing LINUX - Ubuntu. Then instalation will put GRUB/LILO to mbr, but it wont solve main problem, how to restore Vista BOOTMGR.

Edited October 4, 2006 by bonzai10

[tarquel]

if u can get into xp with the sata drive connected, you could try to install it again onto the sata drive from there...

also, try RC1 as its much better and performance is improved too [plus its likely that it has more drivers in it too ]

To boot the vista DVD and allow it to see the SATA drive, you'll need to look up your motherboard on the motherboard manufacturers website to see whether they have any beta vista SATA drivers available, and put them onto a floppy disk [or USB flash dive perhaps] and then when you get to the selecting the partition in the vista install, you can install the drivers and see the SATA drive

Regards and let us know how you get on.

Nath.

[bonzai10]

I couldnt install latest build 5726 (or something like that) because installer (32bit version is avaliable for public use and im not a beta tester) was crashing all the time so i decided to install x64 version. I dont find much problems in this build.

Back to topic. My HDD's are working fine and Vista installer sees SATA driver.

What i have noticed is that i dont have bootmngr.exe and even though i installed Ubuntu and configured GRUB to boot Vista it still says "BOOTMGR is missing Press Alt+Ctrl+Del to reboot system".

I need to install Vista's boot manager to SATA drive.

And remove it from ATA drive.

Excuse me for off topic but one time i ran ASR(Automatic System Recovery) under XP instalation to recover mbr. Is there any easier way to do that. Also i noticed that when insaller loads liblaries and drivers we can quickly enter ASR by pressing F2 key but installer wants spetial disk, how to enter ASR difrently ?

[andrewpayne]

Try http://www.vistabootpro.org/ - it'll install under your Windows XP and then display any found Vista Boot Records - if any. Useful app which I have used to remove/repair Vista Boot issues.

[tarquel]

if you cant get any joy with andrewpayne's suggestion, then post back on here and we'll have another think

I've an idea but no time to post it at the moment [feel free to grab me on MSN tho].

Looks like a neato tool though - nice find andrew.

Nath

[fizban2]

you can also boot from your Vista DVD and use the repair tools on the first page to repair the MBR...

[bonzai10]

fizban2, i tried that and it didn't work.

I installed New Build, and im posting new topic because new issues have came out, so forget about recovering Vista MBR, but it still can be usefull Thread for other users. All i need now is to recover XP MBR, i will try to do it under XP instalation.

Thanx Anyway for Your Support :>