Help. Dual boot won't boot.

[johnwillyums]

Just when things were going really well.
Dual booting Vistax64 and W7x64 and I've somehow screwed it up and can't boot at all.
Last night I must have done something dreadful and today I can't boot at all into either operating system and I think I may have made things worse.
I'd noticed that my small OC had returned to default. Not sure how but probably during all the frantic installing I've been doing lately. So I went into the BIOS to restore it. I then checked the boot order so I must have done something wrong in there.

When I rebooted I got a "Disk read error. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart". When I did this nothing happened at all so all I could do was a hard shutdown. Since then I haven't been able to boot.
Needless to say I removed the overclock but same result
I then tried a repair install with my Vista disk and tried again-same result-disk read error etc.
Did the same thing with mt W7 7100 disk- same result.
Just now, in desperation I've reinstalled Vista. That has got rid of the disk read error but gets to the boot choice bit and just stops there. I don't get a boot choice just a blinking cursor.
I tried another repair from disk and both os tell me no problem and the pc booted normally.
I'm typing this from the Asus Express Gate OS that came with my mobo but I don't think I can do much with it.
Can anybody advise me?

Thanks, John

 

[torrentg]

All you had to do probably was set back the bios to boot off the drive that contains the boot files. You probably inadvertently told bios to boot from a different drive, hence the error upon booting.

If I were you, I'd change the hard drive that is booting now and see what happens. Take things from there.

 

[johnwillyums]

Hi torrentg, thanks for your reply.
I have 2x500GB drives so I went into the BIOS and swapped them but no joy.
Same result. Booting from the hard drive I get the Express Gate Splash plus two Asus splash pages and then a dark screen with a cursor. Normally at this point the cursor would move down slightly and I would get my boot choice Windows 7 or Vista but now it just stops there.
It looks like it's trying but cant find the boot choice.

Thanks again,John

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello John.


I did something similar when changing cases; changing the boot order like torrentg has suggested to you, fixed my problem. (I had crossed up the SATA cables)
















Later :shock: Ted

 

[johnwillyums]

Thanks Ted but as you can see it made no difference. I think I've really screwed things up. Can't even access my fresh Vista install. John

 

[Brink]

Hello John,

You might see if running a Startup Repair can repair them for you.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[johnwillyums]

Have tried startup repair several times with both os disks and that tells me there is nothing wrong and I am booting normally. Been trying to fix this for hours. thanks Shawn, John

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello John.


This may not work, have you tried to reset the CMOS?

















Later :shock: Ted

 

[johnwillyums]

Not sure how to do that Ted. Do you mean take the battery out of my motherboard?
Thanks, John

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Not sure how to do that Ted. Do you mean take the battery out of my motherboard?
Thanks, John

Yes, the mobo has a jumper but the battery will do it.


We have the same board.










Later :shock: Ted

 

[johnwillyums]

Hello again Ted. Just tried that. I removed the battery for over 5 minutes and the replaced it.
I had high hopes for a moment as i immediately got a message about choosing a boot order in the BIOS so I went in there and set it to HDD and I got the same result with the splash pages then the blinking cursor. No boot
Looking on the bright side my computer is now in 2002 and it would have been the hottest rig on the block back then.
Seriously though I'm really stuck here. The most drastic thing I could think of was a fresh Vista install and I've done that but can't access it. where can I go from here?

Cheers John

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Could you have had a HDD go out?




















Later :shock: Ted

 

[johnwillyums]

Don't think so. Earlier I tried booting from an Easus Partition Manager Pro 3 Live Disk in the hope that would have some way of helping.
I couldn't see anything likely to help and, as I wasn't booting it into windows everything was greyed out and I was strongly advise not to change anything from this mode.
However i could see both my drives, labelled correctly with the installs and files in them etc. Tantalising.
john

Also can feel them both vibrating slightly if I touch them so I think they're ok. j

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Well John, I'm fresh out of ideas. I'm very sorry you're having these troubles; maybe someone else will have some more useful suggestions for you. I will keep watching this thread to see the outcome.



















Later :shock: Ted

 

[johnwillyums]

Thanks for your time Ted. I'm pretty fed up. I'm not sure what time it is in South Carolina but it's getting late here and I have to work in the morning.
I'll check again tomorrow to see if anybody has a way forward for me.

Thanks again, John:shock:

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

One more idea.


Have you tried to boot into safe mode?



It's 6:30PM on Monday.













Later :shock: Ted

 

[SIW2]

Hi john,

Did you try resetting BIOS to defaults?

 

[torrentg]

A way forward? Sure. Dunno if you want to do this though.

Switch your SATA cables (assuming the drives are SATA of course.)

Then set bios to boot from Vista or 7 install DVD, your choice. Clean install with a format to a drive you are willing to lose all data on.

When the install is completed, set the bios to the hard drive where the boot files were placed. The first one the bios sees I'm guessing but even if you have to try another drive, no big deal. Should work.

 

[johnwillyums]

Hi SIW2. Yes I've tried setting the BIOS to default but nothing changed. My drives are identical Samsung Spinpoint 500GB. I've noticed they appear as SM and PM in the BIOS and I've tried juggling them around but nothing.
I have a feeling that there is just something crucial I am missing. It's like it's almost there. I've noticed this morning that, after various boot attempts, my Kone mouse has come back to life. It wouldn't work last night so I stuck an old MS mouse in. The Kone mouse requires it's own drivers and has been a bit temperamental to get them installed on both Vista and W7.
Torrentg, that is a bit drastic but if there's no other way I'll eventually have to do that.
I'm reluctant because one of the drives has the operating systems on and the other all my media files and thousands of photographs.
I don't know which is which physically.
Also I'm not sure which is the SATA cable. Is it the wide plug or the narrower one?
It's early here and I've just woke up and have to go to work soon so I haven't time to do much now.
I have no problem losing my operating systems as I can re install them ( although it's a pain) but I'd like to avoid losing all my media files. Is there no way of differentiating between the two?
I just want my computer back. This is a disaster.
Thanks for your input, John

ps Ted. not sure what you mean by booting into safe mode.

 

[johnwillyums]

Torrentg. just a thought. I already did a fresh install of Vista and installed it to the partition it had previously been on. I read somewhere that Vista has to go on first.
Anyway, wouldn't that imply that I'm trying to boot from the correct drive?
As I said earlier if I boot from Easus Partition Manager disk I can see both installs on one drive and all my stored stuff on another. Could I not disconnect one of the drives and thereby discover which is which using the Easus disk?
Also, assuming I can find which drive is which how do I do a clean install and format. I dont recall seeing a format option or would a regular install rather than a custom install format it automatically?

Thanks a lot for your input, John