Question

Vista Home Premium and winload.exe booting problems

Asked by: huntersvcs

I cannot boot from CD as long as the WinRE partition is active (even if hidden), nor can I boot from the harddrive.  If at least the system partition is active, I get (booting from HDD or from CD):  winload.exe missing or corrupt - it instructs me to boot with the CD, but I get the same error then too.  I have used the new BootMaster Diagnostics (Vista - Beta) and can verify that the partitions are present (although the WinRE is labeled DIRTY).  I can even use NTFSPRO to mount the partitions and access the data!  If I delete all the partitions (zero MBR), then I can boot with the CD and it wants to install, but obviously sees no previous installations.  What I want to do is to get the OS back up and running without having to do a complete reinstall.  Attached is a copy of the partition scan results from BM.  Can anybody help?

  • BMD01.TXT
    • 1 KB

    Partition diagnostics using BootMaster ver. 5.01

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Asked On
2009-02-25 at 10:09:28ID24176996
Topics

Computer Hard Drives

,

Windows Vista

Participating Experts
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: kyodaiPosted on 2009-02-25 at 10:25:07ID: 23736654

The "dirty" is just a flag vista sets to have chkdisk run. usually it must not mean anything, but as you can't boot there obviously IS a problem. You can try to boot an acronis CD (or similar) to backup your data before it gets corrupted even more, sometimes these disk tools can make stuff worse.

I'd try to repartition and then restore your Acronis (or whatever drive backup you prefer)image.

I can only guess here, but it sounds like either the MBR or bootloader is damaged. A new installation may sound painfull, but i would recommend to "limit" the time you spend for recovery attempts, as even like 4 hours of re-installing Vista and all application may be the better solution after you spent 5 hours with diagnostics/recovery attempts without any effort.

I am however surprised that booting from the CD did not work for you. Normally you should be able to boot from CD and the Vista installation menu should come up with repair options. If this does not come up, you did not boot from CD or your CD is damaged, too.

 

by: huntersvcsPosted on 2009-02-25 at 10:39:13ID: 23736800

Hi Kyodai:

I'll take your comments in reverse order:

CD did not boot or is damaged - cannot be the problem.  The CD does boot, but it just freezes with a black screen after loading the windows files into RAM.  Like I mentioned, if I delete the partitions, the CD boots just fine.

Yes, the MBR appears to be damaged, and I'm even got the feeling the BDC took a hit since the MFT appears inaccurate (see attachment).

Dirty Flag - know about that - would be easily fixed if I could boot from CD!

 

by: kyodaiPosted on 2009-02-25 at 14:48:23ID: 23739517

If the MBR can not be repaired i would say it looks bad for the partition. However, if you can not even access the recovery console from your Vista CD you very probably have another very bad problem as untill you actually select recovery console it should even boot with a HDD teard to shreds, so i find it very mysterious, have never seen anything similar before. As you said it loads the files into RAM and freezes during that would usually mean a RAM timing problem or even broken RAM. If you can still mount the partitions i would urgently recommend to back up all data before it is completely lost.

Dirty flag is of no further interest as all it does is telling vista to start disk checking on next boot, it has no affect to the partition itself or the MBR/MFT. Everything you could fix by changing dirty flag would be that Vista would not check the disk on startup (which you probably currently wish it could do).

After backing everything up properly you can try fixmbr from the recovery console - if you have any way to run it. For Harddisk 0 this would be fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0. This should fix the problem if it's the usual "broken MBR" problem (But that you cant boot from CD is indeed unique!).

 

by: huntersvcsPosted on 2009-03-04 at 11:13:14ID: 23798135

Since I have not gotten any more feedback, have just decided to close this one out.  I have been able to determine, however, that it was NOT a hardware issue.

 

by: kyodaiPosted on 2009-03-06 at 08:42:58ID: 23818375

If it was not a hardware issue my best guess is a broken Vista installation medium. We have set up and repaired so many machines with Vista by booting from the DVD, the recovery console should ALWAYS come up whatever the state of the HDD is, i never experienced it crashing or hanging in this phase. Did you really check its not a hardware issue? So the same occurs when you build in another HDD/DVD drive and use another CD/DVD?

 

by: huntersvcsPosted on 2009-03-06 at 12:25:39ID: 23820695

Kyodai:
I don't believe it was a hardware issue - only time will tell.  Funny thing, though - when I zero'ed the MBR I could boot successfully from the CD.  Using the installation process, I manually  deleted the 3 partitions present and began the installation on a single partition.  During the very FIRST reboot, it complained that it couldn't find the BCD!  I deleted the partition again, REFORMATTED the drive with the CD - and then everything ran smoothly with no issues.  I am only guessing, but although I deleted the partitions, the MFT became offset somehow (could have been a single bit).  That would be enough to let the installation START (just a copy routine anyway), but after the reboot the BCD couldn't marry up with the MFT.  Again, just guessing.  That still doesn't explain why the CD boot always failed!  Since I have manually reformatted the drive, I have been able to boot at least twice with the CD.  Wish I could have gotten to the repair console - would have saved around 20 hours!

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