Vista not booting... no valid system partition?

matt100 · 22 May 2008 at 20:15

I've just unplugged a HDD to swap it out (pc switched off etc) but I swapped the wrong disk, I meant to switch my storage disk not the C drive.

Anyway, no probs I thought and plugged the C drive back in.. nothing, it just asks for valid boot media or whatever.

So I thought I'd give windows repair a go so I stuck my vista 64 disk in and ran repair, it didn't find any windows installs which i thought was odd, I ran the command prompt and its deffo the right disk so i ran startup repair and it says its fixed it and the problem was...

"the partition table does not have a valid system partition"

And it says its fixed it.

So I reboot and it all happens again..

Is this fixable or is it time for a reinstall? Bit gutted tbh as windows was all running lovely (shush about backups

)

HarryPainful · 22 May 2008 at 20:24

Sounds like the partition table was on the MBR of the other disk.

Is the partition that vista is installed on marked as active?

matt100 · 22 May 2008 at 20:31

I have literally no idea...

However when I booted with just the other disk in (storage) it spotted a vista install.. would that point to what you've just said?

If so can I fix it?

matt100 · 22 May 2008 at 20:33

wow.. you're a genius!!!

**** me sideways it works again! Now how do I get this partition table onto the windows disk?

HarryPainful · 24 May 2008 at 12:01

You might be able to get an app that will pull it from one to the other.

Try Ultimate boot disk, thats full of useful stuff that could sort this out.

matt100 · 24 May 2008 at 14:22

i reghosted the drive copying the mbr, that got it to the point where it said the bootmgr was missing, the vista disk sorted that so it will now boot with just the C disk in.

Odd issue, never experienced anything like that before!

Very happy I don't have to reinstall, I'm now at that very happy state with all my apps/networks/spyware protection etc working absolutely hunky dory