[stillbaddad]

Hello all.

Please help me i am at my wits end.
A few days ago i recieved a message on my main window of Vista, HARD DRIVE PROBLEM. It informed me that my hdd was about to pack in.

Since then i have been frantically looking for a HDD repair disk. My friend told me to just back up all my information onto my spare HDD and reinstall Vista after formatting it.
Bad advice was taken so i did.
No i cant start up my computer unless my vista disk is inserted on boot up as i get a message BOOT MNGR NOT FOUND. i think this was part of my original problem but i have made it worse by reinstalling the program on the HDD.
Is there any tools which could fix this problem

Is there anyway i can overcome this problem

Many thanks for all your help

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Hi there

The info I'm about to give you is from Microsoft's website - I have not tried this personally so I can't promise it will work, nor can I promise it won't completely screw it up. But seeing as you've already backup everything up & Vista isn't booting anyway, then you probably haven't got too much to lose!

If you boot from the Vista disk, it should give you the option to 'Repair your computer'.
Select this option, select the operating system you wish to repair, then in System Recovery Options click 'Command Prompt'

In command prompt, type:
bootrec /fixmbr [press enter]
bootrec /fixboot [press enter]

Type exit to quit & reboot. Remove the Vista disk or make sure that the system tried to boot from the hard disk before the vista disk obviously.
This should repair the boot sector.

[Samm]

Hi there

The info I'm about to give you is from Microsoft's website - I have not tried this personally so I can't promise it will work, nor can I promise it won't completely screw it up. But seeing as you've already backup everything up & Vista isn't booting anyway, then you probably haven't got too much to lose!

If you boot from the Vista disk, it should give you the option to 'Repair your computer'.
Select this option, select the operating system you wish to repair, then in System Recovery Options click 'Command Prompt'

In command prompt, type:
bootrec /fixmbr [press enter]
bootrec /fixboot [press enter]

Type exit to quit & reboot. Remove the Vista disk or make sure that the system tried to boot from the hard disk before the vista disk obviously.
This should repair the boot sector.

[pip22]

Bear in mind that if a hard disk is "about to pack in" as you put it, this is due to wear-and-tear or component failure within the drive, and cannot be fixed by repair utilities -- all they can do is fix errors within the filing system which is what Microsoft's error-checker does (formerly known as Scandisk prior to XP). Physical errors (eg damaged sectors) will get progressively worse and the only 'fix' for that is new disk.

If you know which manufacturer made the disk you can download a diagnostic tool from their website which will confirm if indeed the disk is at risk of imminent failure. The diagnostic tool runs from a bootable floppy in DOS so it doesn't matter if it won't boot into Windows, but obviously you need a working PC with which to download the utility to create the floppy. If the PC you intend to run the tool on doesn't have a floppy drive, you can download instead a bootable CD version of it (usually supplied as an ISO image).

Edited by pip22, 15 January 2008 - 09:45 AM.

[stillbaddad]

mant thanks for the information, Samm and Pip22 i will check both options shortly and let you know how i get on.

Shaun