This is not a pretty site. After trying to boot your pc all you see is a blank, black screen with a white, flashing cursor in the upper-left corner. Below are the steps I took to resolve this issue in Windows 7 (should work in Vista as well, not sure about XP).
-Enter the Recovery Console (boot from the Vista/Win7 dvd, system repair, command prompt)
-Type both commands below at the command prompt:
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr
-Exit the Recovery Console and reboot
That most likely has resolved the issue and the pc will now boot normally. If not you may also have to enter Safe Mode and disable UAC.
Here is a second options that has also worked for me:
ReplyDeleteCheck in Bios ( it will tell you when you startup to press F2 or Del or similar for setup ) that your HD is listed as a boot device.
If it still won't boot, make sure the Vista partition is set as Active - your backup software may have some kind of partition manager included where you rt click the Vista partition and mark as active.
Otherwise, boot to system recovery options , select command prompt, type:
(assuming your Vista partition is 2 - if not, use the correct number for your machine - as shown by the list par command )
X:\sources>diskpart {enter}
DISKPART> sel disk 0 {enter}
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list par {enter}
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 30 GB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 25 GB 30 GB
Partition 3 Primary 23 GB 55 GB
Partition 0 Extended 70 GB 78 GB
Partition 4 Logical 40 GB 78 GB
Partition 5 Logical 30 GB 118 GB
DISKPART> sel par 2 {enter}
Partition 2 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> active {enter}
DISKPART>exit {enter}