Help! Vista won't boot without CD

So today I decided to install vista on my main computer. I changed the
Boot sequence to CD first, then HDD. Everything ran fine and vista
seemingly loaded perfectly. After moving some files from my backup drive
back onto my main one and installing some drivers, I was asked to
restart my computer (for the drivers) so I did. Remembering that the
boot sequence was still set on CD first, and since my driver CD was
still in the drive, I decided to set the boot sequence back to the way I
had it with XP: HDD and then CD. After doing this I quit BIOS and tried
to boot, but I kept getting a message saying: DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT
SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.

So I restarted the computer again, this time with my Vista CD in the
drive, and again, the computer wouldn't boot and told me to enter a boot
disk. Not knowing what to do, I went back into BIOS and changed the boot
sequence back to CD first, then HD. After doing this, and restarting
with the Vista CD in the drive, my computer booted up with no problems
whatsoever. I tried reinstalling Vista (twice), reformatting the target
hard drive, changing the boot sequence around, pretty much everything I
could think of.

I went into the system recovery options, ran bootrec.exe/fixMbr,
/fixboot, and /scanOS. None of these options fixed the problem, although
I noticed that the /scanOS function told me it could find no Vista
installations...I'm 100% sure that Vista is installed on my HD, but for
some reason it isn't recognised. What am i doing wrong?

Another thing that seemed fishy about the installation process was that
when it asked me to choose a drive to install windows on, my data/backup
drive (200gb) was labeled as Disk 0 and tagged as primary, while my
target drive (80gb) was labeled as Disk 1 and also tagged as Primary.
I've set the boot order to check my target drive (Disk 1) first so this
shouldn't affect anything, just something weird I noticed.

I guess my overall question is, why wouldn't it boot from my HD, and
how can I get it back to normal? Thanks in advance for the help!


--
ahadden

In article <>,
ahadden <> wrote:
>
>I guess my overall question is, why wouldn't it boot from my HD, and
>how can I get it back to normal? Thanks in advance for the help!
>

Wrong boot order in bios? Wrong drive order in bios? Need
special driver for that chipset or controller? Bad install?

Now see if you ran linux you woldn't have these problems. (lol just
kidding :-)

ahadden wrote:
> So today I decided to install vista on my main computer. I changed the
> Boot sequence to CD first, then HDD. Everything ran fine and vista
> seemingly loaded perfectly. After moving some files from my backup drive
> back onto my main one and installing some drivers, I was asked to
> restart my computer (for the drivers) so I did. Remembering that the
> boot sequence was still set on CD first, and since my driver CD was
> still in the drive, I decided to set the boot sequence back to the way I
> had it with XP: HDD and then CD. After doing this I quit BIOS and tried
> to boot, but I kept getting a message saying: DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT
> SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.
>
> So I restarted the computer again, this time with my Vista CD in the
> drive, and again, the computer wouldn't boot and told me to enter a boot
> disk. Not knowing what to do, I went back into BIOS and changed the boot
> sequence back to CD first, then HD. After doing this, and restarting
> with the Vista CD in the drive, my computer booted up with no problems
> whatsoever. I tried reinstalling Vista (twice), reformatting the target
> hard drive, changing the boot sequence around, pretty much everything I
> could think of.
>
> I went into the system recovery options, ran bootrec.exe/fixMbr,
> /fixboot, and /scanOS. None of these options fixed the problem, although
> I noticed that the /scanOS function told me it could find no Vista
> installations...I'm 100% sure that Vista is installed on my HD, but for
> some reason it isn't recognised. What am i doing wrong?
>
> Another thing that seemed fishy about the installation process was that
> when it asked me to choose a drive to install windows on, my data/backup
> drive (200gb) was labeled as Disk 0 and tagged as primary, while my
> target drive (80gb) was labeled as Disk 1 and also tagged as Primary.
> I've set the boot order to check my target drive (Disk 1) first so this
> shouldn't affect anything, just something weird I noticed.
>
> I guess my overall question is, why wouldn't it boot from my HD, and
> how can I get it back to normal? Thanks in advance for the help!
>
>

Disconnect the slave drive and try again. You don't want to confuse
Vista or it will react like our resident MS shill, Frank. Course, if you
used a real operating system like Ubuntu, you wouldn't be having these
problems.

Alias

I've tried just about every boot order and driver order in BIOS that i
can think of. This happened to me when i first installed vista and i got
it to work somehow buts its been a while and I can't remember what I did
to fix it.


--
ahadden

ahadden wrote:
> So today I decided to install vista on my main computer. I changed the
> Boot sequence to CD first, then HDD. Everything ran fine and vista
> seemingly loaded perfectly. After moving some files from my backup drive
> back onto my main one and installing some drivers, I was asked to
> restart my computer (for the drivers) so I did. Remembering that the
> boot sequence was still set on CD first, and since my driver CD was
> still in the drive, I decided to set the boot sequence back to the way I
> had it with XP: HDD and then CD. After doing this I quit BIOS and tried
> to boot, but I kept getting a message saying: DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT
> SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.
>
> So I restarted the computer again, this time with my Vista CD in the
> drive, and again, the computer wouldn't boot and told me to enter a boot
> disk. Not knowing what to do, I went back into BIOS and changed the boot
> sequence back to CD first, then HD. After doing this, and restarting
> with the Vista CD in the drive, my computer booted up with no problems
> whatsoever. I tried reinstalling Vista (twice), reformatting the target
> hard drive, changing the boot sequence around, pretty much everything I
> could think of.
>
> I went into the system recovery options, ran bootrec.exe/fixMbr,
> /fixboot, and /scanOS. None of these options fixed the problem, although
> I noticed that the /scanOS function told me it could find no Vista
> installations...I'm 100% sure that Vista is installed on my HD, but for
> some reason it isn't recognised. What am i doing wrong?
>
> Another thing that seemed fishy about the installation process was that
> when it asked me to choose a drive to install windows on, my data/backup
> drive (200gb) was labeled as Disk 0 and tagged as primary, while my
> target drive (80gb) was labeled as Disk 1 and also tagged as Primary.
> I've set the boot order to check my target drive (Disk 1) first so this
> shouldn't affect anything, just something weird I noticed.
>
> I guess my overall question is, why wouldn't it boot from my HD, and
> how can I get it back to normal? Thanks in advance for the help!
>
>
Do you have SATA drives, and do you need to install the SATA drivers In
order to reboot? If you do you will have to use another computer to
download the drivers and copy them to a floppy. Then you will have to
hit the F6 key while doing the Vista install, put the floppy in, and do
a follow the rest of the routine that I don't remember.

Or if your bios has the option, you can change the setting from
SATA/RAID to IDE or Combination, and it will boot up. That's what I did
and I never did get around to loading the SATA/RAID drivers.

You're probably going to say, if it can't work without the drivers, how
did it load okay all the way through the Vista load, and only fail after
the reboot. That's a good question, and I'll be watching to see if
someone has an answer.