whaaaaat theeeee ????????

P_A_N_I_C · 27 Jul 2008 at 00:56

have a setup like this

c: windows xp
d: designing stuff
e: storage stuff
f: media stuff

had major probs over the past few days with random reboots. think it's my nice single platter 250GB barracuda playing up (c: ) :mad:

cloned the hdd onto a 200 GB newly fully formatted hard drive that has been used for storage only before. i disconnected all the other drives to prevent a mistake

so i bung all the other drives back in, switch on and get a Windows boot manager screen

thought that was weird because ive never seen that before. pressed enter to get this:

Vista corrupt?? :confused:

however if i rebooted and chose the XP hard drive to boot from, then everything was ok and the other drives showed up as they should in windows.

i disconnected the whole lot again after the same thing happening over and over again. then added each drive one at a time.

now everything is ok, XP boots no probs.

can anyone explain that at all? some weird virus or something? i must stress that Vista is nowhere at all on my system :confused:

Burnsy2023 · 27 Jul 2008 at 01:04

Boot off the Vista CD, go into the recovery console and use fixmbr and fixboot

Burnsy

Hamster · 27 Jul 2008 at 01:10

Burnsy2023 said:
Boot off the Vista CD, go into the recovery console and use fixmbr and fixboot

Considering OP is running XP and doesn't have vista installed, wouldn't he be better off using the recovery console from the xp cd?

Craig321 · 27 Jul 2008 at 01:19

Very strange how it had the proper Vista boot "failed to start" message and everything.

Could be a virus I guess if you've never installed Vista, your best bet is probably just to plain reinstall and start again with such a weird problem.

Hamster · 27 Jul 2008 at 01:22

My guess is that OP did install vista at one point, probably as dual boot, then removed it. Correct me if i'm wrong!

Craig321 · 27 Jul 2008 at 01:28

That's what I'm thinking, but if the OP 100% didn't install Vista then I'd say it's some kind of boot virus.

AWPC · 27 Jul 2008 at 01:29

I realise the OP does not have Vista but the solution is as below.

Its a problem with Vista itself. You have to use cacls on the command line to remove the protection on winload.exe then replace it with the .mui version. I have Vista on 2 different partitions (Ultimate & Home Premium) and this exact same error message comes up every once in a while. I think it is related to either Hard Drive caching issues, 3rd party software overwriting Vista system files (Nero7 is really bad at this) or a failed Windows Update which corrupts winload.exe.

Trying a repair from the Vista DVD does not fix this. I have even had to reinstall the entire OS before as could not repair it now I have 2 Vista partitions on the same PC so it does not matter as I can boot into the other OS and replace the file.

Vista does not like multiboot OS in my experience as my other PC has both XP & Vista and can get the same issues. MS cannot help either but if you look on the official Vista forums lots of people get this error and no-one has the cause only the answer (replace with another copy of the file but that is not straigthforward for many when you have to strip out the permissions to do so & could not do this in XP either).

Also another oversight from MS is that System Restore will not work on Vista if you also have XP installed on the same PC even though it is on another partition it does not work at all which sucks bigtime!!

Good luck.

asim18 · 27 Jul 2008 at 01:42

This happens to me sometimes, maybe thrice a month. i just hit ESC and it restarts fine.

Hamster · 27 Jul 2008 at 01:43

AWPC said:
Also another oversight from MS is that System Restore will not work on Vista if you also have XP installed on the same PC even though it is on another partition it does not work at all which sucks bigtime!!

Will system restore work in vista if you turn off the setting for the xp os drive?

AWPC · 27 Jul 2008 at 01:58

JoeMama said:
Will system restore work in vista if you turn off the setting for the xp os drive?

Never tried it but do not think it will work if XP is installed at all. Could not find anyway to reboot using the Vista DVD to find the Vista system restore it would not pick it up in the Vista menu you have the recovery options in. It will look for the Vista restore but cannot find it if XP is also installed on your PC. Seems like it confuses the Vista recovery options if Vista is not the 1st OS installed on your C drive. Which is a nice touch from MS methinks!!

One way which may work but I am not about to try it as I have reinstalled Vista too much recently

is to do the following:

1: Install XP and before rebooting to do the Vista install disable system restore in XP.

2: Reboot and install Vista as normal then try to go back to a Vista system restore.

Any brave soul want to confim this works??

edscdk · 27 Jul 2008 at 08:15

I changed my vide card that broke my vista (the same message you get) probably a generic thing... still xp handled the change so I jsut dont use vista cos im 2 lazy to fix it

ultrakipper · 28 Jul 2008 at 17:32

I had a similar screen when over clocking too much, I lowered the settings and windows booted ok.