Vista - Vista Home Premium 64 wont boot after new video card

Hey guys,

I upgraded my video card, now i have a Geforce 260 from a geforce 8800.

I installed it with no problems but then when i turned my PC on my HDD wont boot and says there is a "boot failure load system disk and press enter"

I did that and now I'm trying to repair my system (as ive read on this when you swap hardware with vista). Problem is my HDD with vista on it is not showing up on the "list of vista OS's that you want to repair". It says that i can load drivers so that my HDD shows up. I have no clue where i can find these drivers in windows. Anyone have a clue where i can browse for these?

Also the setup is not allowing me to "upgrade my windows" (keeping all my folders and files) I can only do a total re-install which i dont want to do.

Any help would be great thanks!

Hi BigZed, and welcomr to the vista forums

The errors you outline would suggest that the original vista partition/drive is not present,

when you installed your new card did you make any changes to the Bios?

Obviously you had to open the case to install your new card so you may want to check the physical connections inside the case as they may have been loosened during the install and then disconnected after re-assembly.

you would only have to load drivers if the system is set up for RAID drives and needs drivers loaded before Vista loads. If this was not the case before the upgrade then changing the Video card would not change this

Personally I would check the cables.

also when you upgraded the card did you remove the existing drivers before you started the removal of the existing card? If not then it may be wise to start into safe mode un install the drivers , restart in normal mode let vista load the default drivers for the new card which you can then upgrade to the latest from the manufacturers site

Hey barman,

I'll check the physical connections. I did uninstall the old drivers b4 installing this new card.

The weird thing about this is that I can browse my HDD's and see all my files and what not. Just the windows repair does not list my windows vista installed on my one HDD.

Do i have the change my bios so it boots directly from the DVD b4 it reads my HDD?

Hi BiZed

Yes unless you have a key to switch built into the bios to select for each boot (mine has the F10 key which brings up a boot dialogue)

If you can see the files from the missing install it would suggest that the boot manager is corrupted...

Vista’s System Recovery Console - BestTechie Forums

...take a look at this link and see if anything there can help

Hey Barman,

So i think (keeping fingers crossed) i figured it out. I have two HDD's C Volume (vista) was on sata 4 and D Volume (backup) was on Sata 3. So when windows loaded the volumes were reversed...so i tcouldnt find vista.

Im reparing now....is that all i have to do?

Or do I hit the "upgrade windows" instead?

Another update; my windows has loaded and im now installing the drivers for the new video card.

Ive changed my boot priority back to "normal" (HDD, DVD, removable).

After all this i'll restart...hopefully everything works out.

Cant believe I had the SATA cords switched :P

Hi Bigzed,

It's probably too late to say just try the repair options first but hopefully things are looking good

Hey Barman,

Ok so now im back into windows, new drivers are installed and everyhting seems to be working fine.

But I do have one problem; When i boot i get the same message as before "Disk boot failure insert system disk and press enter"

when i put in my home edition 64 disk it starts to load...BUT then my windows loads like normal after that.

I never get to the "vista set up screen" it just loads right into my OS.

Little odd, do you know how i can get around this? so it just loads like normal?

I have set my Bios back to HDD, Disk, then removeable

Thanks.

Hi BigZed,

Glad to hear that you are getting there

I have heard of the problem where the DVD was required to boot but not used as is your case. In other cases the problem was caused by an incorrect entry in the vista BCD where somehow this was pointing a file location to the DVD location when the system found the the file the boot continued normally. this appears to be what is happening in your case.
if you download and install Easy BCD this will allow you to edit the details of the bootloader to correct the error

Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies

When you have downloaded and installed you should be able to use the advanced tools to correct the error (make sure you use the program to backup your current settings before you do anything!! )

Full instructions (and a lot more information), can be found at the Wiki ...

EasyBCD Documentation Home - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

you may want to have a look at the forum there as is a lot of good information there too

Hopefully with a little bit more work you will get the system how you want it to be. The final part of getting it all back may get a llittle technical but if you follow the information on the site I'm sure it's possible