I tried the MBR solution, and that did the trick. I am now faced with my regular boot menu, my VISTA boots normally, only the 7 installation is a clean install. But the stuff I installed under the RC is still there, in the windows.old folder. I think I will just copy the stuff, reinstall what I had installed, and proceed from there. Thanks everyone - especially for the MBR tip.
Hi.
I installed windows 7 yesterday and mine too initially had the same problem. Either do not reboot your system after the FINAL installation is completed(it asks you to, but don't) or if it persits try not upgrading the launch manager(uncheck this option).
Good luck.
Ps. Final installation is when you upgrade launch manager and some other drivers
After you make sure you have all your files retrieved, you can delete the windows.old folder using Disk Cleanup.
That MBR bootsect command is automated in Windows 7 Startup Repair. It will run it last after trying the repair (bootrec) commands, then finally rewrite MBR (bootsect). This is why it takes 3 tries in Startup Repair.
Glad it all worked out for ya.
Except that this time, where I have the untouched Vista on drive C, and the updated 7 on E, the startup repair utility does not recognize the last failed boot of 7 - it reports no problem every time I tried to repair the system. I think I tried seven times, in all, before giving up. In fact the last time when it rebooted and I got my regular menu (just before the first run) I actually booted into Vista to see if I still could. I could. Then rebooting and going into 7 and it runs for the first time and reboots again (and I could not see where to prevent that - it went on without any input from me) I was back at the black screen, blinking cursor, that I now know signifies no MBR. But yes I'm glad too it worked out in the end.
Interesting to hear. This may be why some are reporting better luck using EasyBCD beta to repair or rewrite MBR in 7.
But Startup Repair is supposed to run those same commands after trying all of its tests.
Did it tell you there was no problem when it found the installation, or after you went ahead into the Recovery Tools menu and clicked on Startup Repair three times?
Startup Repair found the installation and after all its tests said there was no problem with it. (This was the 7 installation. With the Vista, it said Startup Repair could not repair it, but gave no details.) Then when I went to the Recovery Tools menu and clicked on Startup Repair three times, every time it came back it gave me the no problem with the installation message. I did not try with the Vista installation from that menu, though. I was too scared by then that if it says it cannot repair that installation and I force something, I'd really have no way of getting my system back in working order. Do you think I should have tried the startup repair 3 times on the Vista installation? But you'd still think it would be able to find the lack of an MBR for any installation?
Not if Vista is starting, you were right not to mess with it. Since Win7 controls the boot menu, it needed to repair the MBR.
Strange that Win7 would maintain a dual-boot menu which works to get into Vista but not repair its own startup.
If you have not reinstalled, perhaps you could post a screenshot of your Vista Disk Management map using the Snipping tool in Start Menu, attaching file using paper clip in reply box.
Then download in Vista EasyBCD 2.0 beta which can rebuild the Win7 MBR, and post its front panel findings back as a screenshot, too.
Attachment 40162
Gonna forward this thread to SIW2 to take a look, advise on Easy beta's use here and maybe spot if anything has been overlooked.
Here are the two screenshots.
I did not have to download easybcd 2 (beta) as that is what I am already using. You can see I had a triple boot set up, with the third loading ubuntu (on an external disk).
I am not sure what you mean when you say 7 is managing the boot menu - remember I had the Vista on this machine first, and initially a 7 RC, on a -then - new partition. This is an acer notebook with Vista pre-installed.
I think 7 never gets control of the boot menu - and that may be my problem. I do remember that when I installed the RC on my XP machine it did take over control of the boot menu, and in order to get that machine to dual-boot I had to build a boot menu from scratch, since when 7 took over it did not recognize the older OS at all - it just booted me straight into 7. I then downloaded and ran easybcd and put the entry for xp back since I only wanted to try 7 out on that machine. And so far I'm not going to be messing with it either. I like it fine but now that I've been through this I may just wait until all the wrinkles have been ironed out of 7.
The problem seems to be that NeoGrub bootloader which is on the same drive C: as MBR. Can you remove it using Add/Remove in EasyBCD? It's blocking repair of the MBR.
Then boot into Win7 DVD and try running Startup Repair 3 times.
Since you may need to reinstall 7 to overcome the GRUB corruption, you might consider deleting that EISA partition in the prime lower address, either extend Vista into that space (using Partition Wizard CD) or delete Vista and move or reinstall Win7 there.
But first try running Startup Repair 3 times to rewrite the MBR, after deleting that GRUB bootloader using EasyBCD.
If that fails, boot back into Repair Command Line and run "bootrec.exe /fixboot" and "bootrec.exe /fixmbr" then restart,
or if those don't work "Bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force".
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