Whoops - Vista Partition help please

[Piggymon]

Desmo here

Using Vista on the laptop and have just buggered up my partitions and now can't boot into Vista again.

The drive was already split into two partitions. The smaller of these (10GB) had Dell's diagnosis software on it. I added something else which should boot. I then turned this partition into a visible one and now when I start vista it says it can't find Boot Manager and all I can do is Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart.

Is there something I can stick on a USB pen drive to boot into, then rehide this first partition again?

[Mark]

If you have a CD drive handy, then a Linux live CD. Getting the same onto a USB drive is doable though.

I assume the 10GB had the OS restore image on it as well as that's way too big for a diagnostics partition. I also assume it was first in the partition table hence Vista throwing a wobbler.

[Piggymon]

Yep, seen now that it was the first partition hence the problem. It had the old software restore stuff on it but I've got rid of that as I don't want it.

Got something here called Grub Bootloader which somebody has made a rescure disc for a USB drive so going to try that. Heading off out soon though so might have to wait until tomorrow.

[Mark]

Before you go playing with Grub (which is possibly a little heavyweight for what you need - unless you plan on putting a second OS on there)...

Have you tried Vista startup repair (assuming you have an install DVD to hand)?

If that doesn't work, there's bootrec.ece too which is the Vista equivalent of the old fixmbr thing on XP.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

[Desmo]

I'll dig out the Vista DVD I've got and give it a whirl.

I'm kind of up and running in a round about way. I downloaded Ultimate Boot CD and can now choose to boot from the Vista partition. All I need to do now is either re-hide the first partition or get a bootloader of some sort on there. Will do some reading up on that.

[Daz]

fixboot/fixmbr from a Vista recovery console should do it (if those tools still exist anyway). What's probably happened is by setting the recovery partition visible vista's bootloader is trying to boot from it (where previously the first usable partition would have been Vista'ss system partition). Shouldn't be too difficult to sort.

[Admiral Huddy]

or this may help

http://www.sysint.no/nedlasting/mbrfix.htm