Urgent help, think I've killed it :(

I never hotswap GPU's for this reason, always conflicts in drivers. Always uninstall old drivers prior :)

Hope you get it sorted mate.
 
agnes said:
I never hotswap GPU's for this reason, always conflicts in drivers. Always uninstall old drivers prior :)

Hope you get it sorted mate.
Click to expand...

I'd love to give a roll eyes or something to this, but you're dead right!!
I got all excited that I had a new toy so I just dragged the old one out and slapped a new one in. Lazy and worst of all, I knew better!!

Tell you what, I'll give me the :rolleyes:

:p

I'm much calmer now I'm at the gym though, so good start :)
 
Haha, yes, rolleyes on you :P

I only said because I have done it my self so many times before! haha.
 
sounds to me like the drive order is wrong in the bios.
I may have missed something you said, that would invalidate what I am about to say, but I am willing to bet you have two HDD and a dvd drive.
When you dual boot from a system the boot loader effectively swaps the boot order priority. In effect thats what it does, it says "I am making this drive into drive C: and that drive into D:" then you reboot and choose the other OS and it makes the drives swap round.

I dual boot and even though I have been fixing computers and networks for over 20 years now, even I get confused sometimes over the boot priorities especially on these newer motherboards

what you want to do is go into the bios and switch the boot order priority
if it lists one hard drive as the secondary boot drive swap it so it moves up the list to become the primary boot drive

Which motherboard do you have?
 
Ok, my helpful new best friends... Here's what happened next....

The only HDD plugged in is the Vista OS drive.
I went into the BIOS and changed the boot order so that boot from disc is first.
So...
Up comes the install screen, I choose English and click next.
Below 'install' is 'repair', so I click that.
It shows me the Vista installation is the only OS it's detected so again I click next.
It then gives me various options, the first being 'startup repair' to repair any problems preventing windows from starting.
I click that, it does whatever it does, then tells me to restart, so I do.

Again I get 'press any key to boot from disc', this time I let that time out, but instead of windows booting as hoped it then starts scrolling down the screen with

Press F10 For Recovery

I do this, and immediately get the old

NTLDR is missing
Press Crrl+Alt+del to restart

:(

Anything else I can try??

And thanks again all....
 
Ok, thought I'd simply try again but now it tells me 'startup repair could not detect a problem'.

I may well throw it across the room and get a new one!!
I'd happily just format and start again, there's not much on it I'm fussed about losing or can't download again, but there's one folder I really don't want to format :(
 
Ok, the xp drive will boot, so I've booted with that, plugged in the vista drive and I'm copying the folders I want to keep onto the xp drive.
Once it's done I'll unplug the xp drive, reinstall Vista, plug xp back in and copy that folder across again. Then formatt the xp drive and I'll have a fresh install and loads of storage.

What could possibly go wrong huh?? :p
 
If xp boots I think you can just use easybcd to fix the vista bootloader. Would save doing the install. It's a free one I used years ago for dual booting xp and vista. Good luck with whichever route you choose
 
Nah, I don't need it to be dual boot anyway as I never use XP anymore, Vista will be snappier with a fresh install and I could use the storage space too, might as well take it on the chin and do it.
Cheers though, and thanks to everyone for trying to help too :)
 
Ok, getting ridiculous!!

The original Vista drive is 300gb.
So I try to reinstall Vista, put in my product key, and get to 'where do you want to install windows?' bit.

Listed is:-

Disk 0 Unallocated Space, total size 4.4 gb and free space 4.4 gb
Disk 0 Partition 1 Vista 64, total size 275.1 gb and free space 59.5 gb Primary

Seems very simple right? So with Vista 64 highlighted I click next and get

"Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation"
What?!?! What could possibly be wrong with the bloody hard drive it was already installed on?!?!

Is this an OcUK plot to get me to buy a new rig? Because I'm very close!!!
 
Hello Chris,

What i would suggest you to do from here would be to unplug the sata cable from your xp drive. Leaving only the vista drive installed.

Boot from your windows disk. Once you get to the part of the installation where you can click custom install hit that. Now you will see a few partitions on your hard drive. Highlight them both individualy and then goto avanced drive options and press delete.

Once you have deleted both of the partitions you should be left with only one saying unallocated space (approx 300GB). Now just highlight that and press next to start the installation.

Let me know how you get on! ;)
 
Ohlawll said:
Hello Chris,

What i would suggest you to do from here would be to unplug the sata cable from your xp drive. Leaving only the vista drive installed.

Boot from your windows disk. Once you get to the part of the installation where you can click custom install hit that. Now you will see a few partitions on your hard drive. Highlight them both individualy and then goto avanced drive options and press delete.

Once you have deleted both of the partitions you should be left with only one saying unallocated space (approx 300GB). Now just highlight that and press next to start the installation.

Let me know how you get on! ;)
Click to expand...

It was more luck than judgement, but that's exactly what I did earlier!! :)
I'm currently typing this from my computer and not my bloody phone anymore :D

Great advise though, thanks! I love this forum!! No end of helpful knowledgeable people all willing to, well, help!

Updating windows and reinstalling drivers is taking hours though!
And I've got the old GPU back in while I'm doing it, which means once these windows updates are done I'll have to uninstall the graphics drivers, swap the cards out and try again!!

It'll all be worth it when Diablo 3 is out :D
 
@ Ohlawll, I see your location is OcUK HQ, you shouldn't be giving me advise dude :p I was soooo close to buying a new rig today, priced up twelve hundred quids worth!

Glad I didn't do it though, I'd have had the biggest attack of 'purchase remorse'! I'll save up and get a new one for CoH 2 next year :)
 
Great to hear you are back in windows!

Also, you shouldn't have to be forced to upgrade if your current system is easily fixable. Upgrading is of personal choice, and I'm hopeful that when the time comes to upgrade that you will consider us!

Also, I'm interested to hear how you are getting/got on?
 
Right all,

Just a brief note to say thanks to everyone who offered help and advise.
It's all back up and running :)
No longer a dual boot system as I never used XP anymore anyway.
So with a bit of booting to XP, copying everything I wanted to keep from Vista onto the XP drive, then a complete re-install of Vista, copying the files back from the XP drive and a final format of the XP drive, I now have a fully functional uncluttered computer again.
Got the new GPU installed too and I'm very happy with it :)

One thing I was a bit surprised about was the sheer number of windows updates required!! Getting everything back up to date took hours!!

All ready for Diablo 3 on Tuesday!

Thanks all :)
 
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