Okay, we are both getting confused here, let me start over. Wall-o-text incoming...
I was defragging my drive, while idle, my system bluescreened (either a HDD or driver related problem) forcing a restart. I had previously scheduled a chkdsk on next boot, so the chkdsk started. I let it run for 30 minutes or so. Chkdsk locked up at 12% of step 4 of 5, forcing me to restart my computer by just shutting it off with a push of the power button.
The next time I turned on my PC, it got to the green loading bar, then abruptly reset. A message greeted me, saying that Windows didn't start last time and to try several troubleshooting options.
I cannot boot into safe mode or safe mode with command prompt. When I do, and it is showing the system files loading, it gets to crcdisk.sys (not 100% certain on that but pretty close) and does the abrupt restart.
So I popped my OEM restore disc in. Start up repair could do nothing, and returned the previously mentioned error, Missing Boot manager. I tried several times runing start up repair.
Next I tried some of the advanced command line fixes. Only then did I realize that since I first put in the recovery disc, in the section where you select an OS to repair or recover, it read:
OS: Windows Vista Partition size: 0MB Location: (Unknown)
After doing the command line fix to restore your partition (which I linked to earlier too) it read correct values. The failure to correct the missing boot manager in start up repair changed from error code 0x15 to error code 0x2.
Frustrated, I tried more solutions in the command line area including the link to the microsoft help article you gave me. Next time I booted recovery mode (after another unsuccessful boot attempt) my OS was no longer on the list, but I could continue to the options anyway. After doing the same partition recovery, it popped back but had the 0 MB partition size and after doing the fix again it seemed to be back to correct values.
If I attempt to RebuildBCD it tells me that it fixed 0 detected operating systems (no matter if my OS was in the list at the beginning of the recovery CD menus or not) leading me to believe I'm attacking the wrong problem here. I now believe that somewhere between the interrupted defrag and interrupted Chkdsk my OS basically was corrupted too much or now can't be located automatically.
While I would love to restore my Vista, it isn't entirely needed as I am considering a Windows 7 clean install to a new drive and just slaving the old drive long enough to pull the data from it (as it appears to be untouched). I can also (I believe) using command prompt and/or the 'locate drivers' area pull much of the data I want to save to my USB drive or an external drive.
However, it would be a ton easier to pull this data with my OS rather than these sketchy methods, so I came here for help. I can't apply any solutions that require me to boot into Vista properly, which is why I asked if the bootrec dvd is a bootable disc or an app I have to run through my OS.
I'd really like to avoid Ubuntu as I'm a bit of a digital artist and I am dependent on my adobe CS4 suite and other graphics programs to work and not become incompatible due to an OS. Plus I know nothing about it or its compatibility with some of the games I mod and the authoring tools said games use.
), same error. I have no other recovery options now and startup fix failed to fix the problem.
