Vista boot problems.

After another one of my regular multi-boot experiments, Vista became unbootable.  I started writing this post while I expected that I would eventually need to ask here for help so that any helpful 9ers would know what I had already tried, but I eventually managed to fix it myself (see the last two paragraphs for the actual solution to my problem).  Since I'd already written most of this, I decided I may as well just post it anyway and maybe someday someone with a similar problem will come across it and it will help them out.

I tried booting from the Vista DVD and going into the repair options.  There was no Vista installation listed on the first screen, so I just clicked next.  I then tried running the startup repair tool.  It told me that it was attempting to repair disk errors, but after a few minutes it said it could not repair this computer automatically.

I then tried running chkdsk /R at the recovery environment command prompt, and it completed succesfully telling me there were no problems (or it had fixed any that were there).

I then tried running the startup repair tool again, with the same results as before.

I then tried going back to the recovery environment command prompt and ran bootrec /fixboot and it told me "The volume does not contain a recognized file system."  bootrec /scanos found Vista without problems, bootrec /rebuildbcd found Vista, and then gave the "The volume does not contain a recognized file system" error.

I then tried navigating around the C: drive on the command prompt and that worked fine.

I then tried using diskpart and found that the partition was not active, so I made it active and tried bootrec /fixboot again.  This time it said it was successful, so I rebooted the computer but still couldn't boot Vista.

I went back to the recovery environment and this time it was able to find the Vista installation and before I could even try anything, it came up with a message saying that it had detected some startup problems and did I want it to automatically repair them and restart.  I told it to go ahead and this time it was able to boot Vista fine.

It is unclear from your post whether or not the problem has been fixed.

In either case, it looks like a similar problem I had a while back when I dropped my laptop and caused the hard-disk to randomly become undetectable. This caused problems every now and then such as when saving the registry because the driver would tell my hard-disk to clear the old registry before writing the new one down, with hilarious consequences (as you can imagine) if it only half-succeeds.

From the problems you have been experiencing it looks like the Vista installation has become confused, perhaps because part of the bootsector became corrupted.

In such a case, chkdsk would notice that part of the bootmanager was broken, and would "fix" it, which merely recovers the file - it typically doesn't know where to put it, and will dump it somewhere obscure on the C: drive (grr).

It is then entirely probably that the Vista installation CD would not discover any installed operating system on that partition, but various other tools would notice particular windows system files that would represent a valid Vista installation. These problems could be compounded if your hard-disk is periodically playing up.

Under such circumstances, it's typically best to just reinstall the operating system (don't use the format option at the disk-selection screen and you won't lose all of your files). If you experience a couple of BSODs later on, or the problem reoccurs, then the problem is almost certainly a hardware fault, and you should look into getting your laptop or desktop computer professionally repaired.

  Regards,
     Matt.