Arch Linux

Serpent

Member

Registered: 2009-03-26

Posts: 2

Vista bootsector problem

Ok, I installed archlinux got to love it, and thumbs up for the wiki!

Though vista became unbootable
This is how my HD is partitioned:

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1           14290       19457    41511960    5  Extended
/dev/sda2               1        1305    10482381    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3   *        1306       11503    81915435    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4           11504       14289    22378545    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda5           14433       19457    40363312+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6           14303       14432     1044193+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7           14290       14302      104359+  83  Linux

(sda2 is a backup parition which dell installed for me)

I've tried to get my vista working again with the vista recovery CD, first by letting it fix is automaticly, after that I tried to fix the bootsector with both bootrec.exe and bootsect.exe . And finally I even wrote the windows bootloader back to the MBR and created a new BCD.
Though nothing seemed to work.
With a tool called 'boot_info_script29' I got a little information about the drives and it tells me:

sda3: _________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       ntfs
    Boot sector type:  Windows Vista
    Boot sector info:  According to the info in the boot sector, sda3 starts 
                       at sector 21196800. But according to the info from 
                       fdisk, sda3 starts at sector 20964825.
    Operating System:  Windows Vista
    Boot files/dirs:   /bootmgr /BOOTMGR /boot/bcd /BOOT/bcd /Boot/bcd 
                       /boot/BCD /BOOT/BCD /Boot/BCD 
                       /Windows/System32/winload.exe 
                       /WINDOWS/system32/winload.exe 
                       /WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/winload.exe 
                       /windows/system32/winload.exe

I've done everything I could imagine to do but can't get vista booted. Is there a way I can write the bootsector of vista from within Arch? Or has somebody had a similar situation?

Edit: Some additional information
I've destroyed a really small fat partition at the start of my HD and moved both NTFS partitions to the left (towards the first cilinder).
cfdisk fails to load since the first time I booted the install cd of archlinux (it keeps coming up with one of my partitions is not correct). Last time it couldn't start because of partition 6.

Please help me out! Thanks in advanced for the replies.

Don't tell me that I don't need vista anyway!

Last edited by Serpent (2009-03-26 15:07:55)

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: Vista bootsector problem

Can you install parted and post the output of:

parted /dev/sda unit S print

That output of fdisk may not help much in this case

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R00KIE
Tm90aGluZyB0byBzZWUgaGVyZSwgbW92ZSBhbG9uZy4K

Serpent

Member

Registered: 2009-03-26

Posts: 2

Re: Vista bootsector problem

I got it fixed!!! took me a day but I'm posting now from vista
I'll share what I know about recovering vista now, since I learned a lot this day

Moving/Resizing  the vista boot partition with Gparted is very dangerous and usually goes wrong. Nevertheless after doing so you can usually fix you partition with running the automatic recovery on the recovery cd. The reason why the partition gets broken is because GParted fails to copy some details from the partition which are important for vista.
More detailed information.

(in this case C: is the vista drive which it is supposed to boot, and D: is the cd/dvd drive)
If the automated recovery doesn't work reboot from the cd, go into recovery mode. Probably this time you won't get prompted to automaticly fix the partition, select your C: drive and click next. Now select to enter the commandline and enter the following commands.

#bootrec.exe /fixmbr
#D:/boot/bootsect.exe /NT60 all /force
#del c:\boot\bcd
#bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd

First we erase whatever bootloader you had and put the vista bootloader in the MBR (which means you'll have to reinstall grub later on)
After that we recreate the bootsector of the vista partition
From this bootsecter we destroy the boot configuration data
and create a new fresh one.

And last but certainly not least (this was my case)
Vista needed a little bit of free HD space in front of it's partition (don't ask me why). Originally there was a fat partition on my drive which I found useless and destroyed. I decided to move my vista partition so that there was 8mb of free space before the partition, and after rebooting the first step of this little guide solved it and gave me my vista back.

I'm really glad I got this solved, special thanks to everybody on freenode#Archlinux, freenode##linux and freenode##windows for the support on this!