Oops. Vista blue screen and no safe mode or repair install

phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
edited December 2008 in Science & Tech
Well, i've done it again... i partitioned my hard drive and left vista on partition 1 (this is a PC). Partition 2 has an installation of OS X 10.5 via Darwin bootloader. Because Darwin is on partition 2, I set partition 2 as active. Since that install, I've noticed that Vista is bluescreening. One time I was able to enter Safe Mode successfully... since then no beans on logging into windows at all. For troubleshooting etc, I currently have partition 1 set active.

I've tried hooking the drive to another computer and entering XP recovery console recovery console isn't an option??? not sure why b/c that computer has it's own install of XP. seems like that should be an option??

I've tried booting into safe mode. as mentioned above, it worked once and not since.

I've tried booting off the Vista disk, but it doesn't find the Vista install and therefore the Repair startup button says "no luck fixing your mistake dumbass" after i click it.

I've gone into the command prompt via Vista install disk... I was able to do "diskpart" then "list disk" and "list part" and it actually found the disk and it did find the partition. However, when i try "C:" it says something like "disk not found" .... so that kind of limits my abilities. I'd like to mess with bcdedit.exe, but I don't know that I'll be able to accomplish anything without being able to recognize the partition as c: (or d: or e: or f:, etc)

Any ideas? Please help. Thanks in advance.

phu feeling dumb again (os x is hott though)

Comments

  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited December 2008
    You are very creative with your mistakes, I'll hand you that!

    Do you a spare drive and a means of imaging your current drive? What I had thought you could try: Image your current drive. Hook up the image drive to a working computer, either as a secondary drive in an an external enclosure, and just format the OSX partition. Then see if your computer will boot with only the original OS on the disk.

    Alright, that solution may not hold any water at all. Disclosure: I have never run a dual OS/boot system. Maybe that at least will give you some ideas.
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited December 2008
    Have you tried to rebuild your MBR and then setting the Vista partition to first boot?
  • trolltroll Windsor, Nova Scotia Icrontian
    edited December 2008
    I've used Vista Boot Pro in the past when I had Slackware,Vista & XP set up on the box. I used separate drives not partitions though, so you might need to put the HD in another machine and use the utility on the drive there.

    http://www.vistabootpro.org/

    It used to be free now they seem to want $8.95 for it, but I've seen it available for download other places though...

    I have used this utility to put the Vista BCD Database back in order...

    Here is M$ info on how to fix the dual boot problem after Vista will not boot any more.
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529

    I run Leopard on my G4 where it belongs... :)
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited December 2008
    thanks all for yer helpz,

    Apparently I didn't subscribe to this thread or something b/c I just now notice that it's gotten some attention.

    Anyway, last night I ended up trying the same routine again. I attached the drive to a working XP install and just let it boot straight to Windows... before it booted up completely, it did the ol' "during boot kinda-gui chkdsk"... and it worked. It found a LOT of index errors and fixed them.

    so...

    I popped the drive back in, to the original PC, booted into Vista, made some changes to the boot routine via bcdedit.exe command prompt and everything was peachy for a minute.

    Then I tried booting back into Vista this morning. More poopy blue screen.
    Leonard wrote:
    Disclosure: I have never run a dual OS/boot system. Maybe that at least will give you some ideas.

    Is this b/c it's unreliable?
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited December 2008
    Apparently I didn't subscribe to this thread or something b/c I just now notice that it's gotten some attention.
    See if we help you again! :rant:

    ;D
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited December 2008
    Leonardo wrote:
    See if we help you again! :rant:

    ;D

    You guys would miss me if i left... you'd be stuck with:

    "how do i choose the disk to boot off of"

    and

    "i have a virus"

    and

    "blah blah standard boring problem"

    i make special mistakes only EXTRA careless, dumb people can make
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited December 2008
    yo yo yo...

    I figured it out.

    It's because I enabled AHCI in the BIOS before activating the driver for AHCI in Windows...

    Just about the dumbest reason to blue screen EVER. (imho)

    thanks for all your help

    on a separate, unrelated note... come check out another post... it has NOTHING in common with this post except that I typed both of them.

    http://icrontic.com/forum/showthread.php?p=659704#post659704
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited December 2008
    I figured it out.
    OK, we'll help you again. :D
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited December 2008
    Leonardo wrote:
    I figured it out
    OK, we'll help you again. :D

    I'm so good at fixing my own mistakes that I should try fixing others' ... as i said before ... other people's mistakes just aren't as interesting.
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