Vista "bootmgr is missing"

[Geo]

So, the C drive on my desktop died today, mid-day. Yes, feel free to offer sympathy. It's a Raptor 150 about 1.5 years old, and frankly I may swear off Raptors for boot drives. Tho this one appears to still be in warranty so I may put it in again when they send me a new one, but not as a boot drive --maybe for backups. But so far my experience has been: 1st Raptor 150 --DOA upon receipt from Newegg. 2nd Raptor 150 --DOA after 18 months. Well, this simply isn't acceptable. Given their capacity they plug these things as boot/swap file drives and frankly it is way too much a pain in my ass to recreate my comfy/cozy environment from scratch.

My backup regime is half-decent, so pretty much I'll only lose about two weeks of email. Everything else amongst the important stuff was on a different drive and backed up to a third drive and a 16GB flash.

Anywho, so I installed Vista x64 Ultimate from the bootable CD again, and that seemed to go okay. Until I took the bootable DVD out and suddenly I'm getting messages about not having a valid boot disk.

Anywho, long story short, if you have multiple physical drives (I'd had three originally and still had two when the Raptor died and I moved to installing Vista on my old D: drive) installed when you install Vista, there is a chance that Vista is going to stick your bootmgr on the wrong one and you'll be f**ked. The only way out from there is to unplug/disable the other drive and reinstall Vista yet again (thus forcing Vista to install bootmgr on the only option drive available to it).

This seems to be a known issue and a bit of googling will show it.

Just thot I'd share.

/poor put upon unfairly Geo

 

[AlphaWolf]

That sucks, but I'd think you'd be able to recover your 2 weeks of email via your isp. I know mine doesn't delete mine for months.

 

[Geo]

Oh, really? I hadn't thot to try that route. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Mize]

email recovery is down to your settings in your client for how long to keep email on the server.
You can always install grub as a boot manager anywhere you like

 

[Rainbow Man]

This seems to be a known issue and a bit of googling will show it.

That's just horrible.

How can they xhip the OS in such a state? It's not as if they didn't have enough time to test it and find stuff liek thsi. Vista was in public beta for what, a year? More? Add to that years more of development internally.

Really makes you wonder what the hell Microsoft's doing.

Peace.

 

[Rodéric]

Yes Vista does copy the boot manager on the first physical drive, no matter on which drive you installed it.
I told about it earlier, so now I always disconnect ALL my drives except the target when installing Windows.

 

[Mize]

I'm confused here. The boot manager *should* and must be installed on the first physical drive else you'd never be able to select your OS...unless the plan is to choose the boot OS using your BIOS. Now the inability to write a new MBR with boot manager on the disk seems crazy.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Well G if it's any consolation you've discovered the problem I was having with Vista installing, thanks.

 

[Geo]

I'm confused here. The boot manager *should* and must be installed on the first physical drive else you'd never be able to select your OS...unless the plan is to choose the boot OS using your BIOS. Now the inability to write a new MBR with boot manager on the disk seems crazy.

How are you determining "first physical drive"? I'd have thought it was determined by the boot order of the hdd in the BIOS, but apparently not. In this case, the original three hdd drives were two SATA and a PATA. The original boot drive was one of the SATAs. When it died, I shifted the second SATA to be the #1 hdd boot priority in the BIOS, but made the CDROMs the absolute #1 boot device in the BIOS, then booted the Vista DVD, installed Vista to the second SATA. . . and all worked fine. I even booted a couple times off the second SATA, but with the DVD still in the DVD player and the DVD player marked as #1 boot priority. . but when I got the little message during boot about hitting a key to boot from cdrom, I didn't hit a key. . . I let it switch (I thot!) to the hdd. Then as soon as I pulled the DVD out of the drive (because silly me thot I was done) and tried a boot. . .higgeldy piggeldy!

 

[Rodéric]

I think it's dependent on the order in which the OS detects it.
I remember that I was booting on secondary master and that windows vista installed its boot manager on primary master.
For a SATA system, I would think the disk connected to SATA0 (or 1 don't remember the numbering scheme) would be considered the first physical disk.

That said, with the BIOS allowing the user to chose which disk to boot on, I don't see any reason NOT to install the boot manager on the install physical disk...

 

[Geo]

Well, at the time it happened to me it was one PATA and one SATA installed (the other failed SATA drive having been unplugged). So I don't see how it could make that choice as they were on different trees. Anyway, whatever. Point is, if anyone has a similar situation. . . like you said, unplug all hdd other than the one you want to install Vista to until you get the initial install done.

 

[Rainbow Man]

How are you determining "first physical drive"? I'd have thought it was determined by the boot order of the hdd in the BIOS, but apparently not.

I was surprised myself by something similar to this when installing Vista on my own recently.

I prefer setting boot order in the bios to start with optical drive and USB first, then HDD, but Vista's install program would have none of it.

It just stated it couldn't find a partition that met all requirements (without mentioning said requirements, or at least the missing ones), and refused to continue with the install.

Re-setting the BIOS' boot order so HDD was first in the list cleared that one up. Not that I understand how the install program could check wether HDD or optical is first in the order - isn't that internal to the BIOS only? - or why it should care wether it is.

Seems to me it just confuses things for the user, since it doesn't exactly state what (it believes) is wrong; it just says it thinks something is wrong. ..Which is wrong, IMO.

I'm also amaz3ed how Microsoft can make releases of windows after windows after windows with as boneheaded install procedures as they do. First it copies a lot of fiesl. Then it asks you for language settings and time and stuff. THEN IT COPIES A LOT OF FILES AGAIN.. Aaaarrggh!

Why can't it ask about all that stuff at the END of the install procedure? IE, when I set language and keyboard layout, after that I'll be able to start using the PC! But nooooooo.. I must babysit it all through. I can't go away for a while and then come back and expect it to be done, because then it's been sitting there for fifteen minutes like a dumb junkheap doing nothing waiting for me to input my preferences.

Incomprehensible!

Peace.

 

[BRiT]

I think, a reason it asks for language is to know which set of files to copy. Or would you rather have it install every single file in every single language to your hard drive?

 

[Geo]

The configuration tools available with Windows have always been pretty bad/hard to find/unintuitive/prmitive UI/etc That's why software like Norton Tools and Partition Magic and such had room to survive in the first place. Having a bootable DVD and their repair/recovery menu is, I think, better than it's ever been before for MS. . . .but that bar is mighty low in the first place, IMHO.

 

[Rainbow Man]

I think, a reason it asks for language is to know which set of files to copy. Or would you rather have it install every single file in every single language to your hard drive?

Well there's only English language files on my Vista DVD.

And afaik only Vista Ultimate has the ability to even change the language of everything, and then you have to download the language packs, they're not included on the disc.

The language on other windows versions only applies to date and time format, currency and keyboard settings and such in my experience.

So it's just a crappy installer really. It could just as well have asked those questions after finishing file copying.
Peace.

 

[BRiT]

In that case, yes, it's a crappy installer...

 

[INKster]

So, the C drive on my desktop died today, mid-day. Yes, feel free to offer sympathy. It's a Raptor 150 about 1.5 years old, and frankly I may swear off Raptors for boot drives. Tho this one appears to still be in warranty so I may put it in again when they send me a new one, but not as a boot drive --maybe for backups. But so far my experience has been: 1st Raptor 150 --DOA upon receipt from Newegg. 2nd Raptor 150 --DOA after 18 months. Well, this simply isn't acceptable. Given their capacity they plug these things as boot/swap file drives and frankly it is way too much a pain in my ass to recreate my comfy/cozy environment from scratch.

My backup regime is half-decent, so pretty much I'll only lose about two weeks of email. Everything else amongst the important stuff was on a different drive and backed up to a third drive and a 16GB flash.

Anywho, so I installed Vista x64 Ultimate from the bootable CD again, and that seemed to go okay. Until I took the bootable DVD out and suddenly I'm getting messages about not having a valid boot disk.

Anywho, long story short, if you have multiple physical drives (I'd had three originally and still had two when the Raptor died and I moved to installing Vista on my old D: drive) installed when you install Vista, there is a chance that Vista is going to stick your bootmgr on the wrong one and you'll be f**ked. The only way out from there is to unplug/disable the other drive and reinstall Vista yet again (thus forcing Vista to install bootmgr on the only option drive available to it).

This seems to be a known issue and a bit of googling will show it.

Just thot I'd share.

/poor put upon unfairly Geo

Did you try this ?

 

[Geo]

It wasn't a multi-boot situation. So, no.

 

[Davros]

could it be that the vista install cant see the sata drive - ive had that problem had to set sata to compatable instead of enhanced in the bios

 

[Geo]

Well, it used the drive, it just required the DVD to be in as well.