Changed to 64-bit Vista, upgraded to Sp1, now I've got boot issues

Ok boys and girls, this seems to be flumoxing me at the moment. Let me explain:

I previously had Vista 32-bit installed on my OS hdd (Raptor X), and I wanted to change to 64-bit, but I also wanted to do a full format of the drive because, I Vista's wisdom it installs over the previous windows installs and keeps the files. I effectively had 3 windows installs on this drive so I decided to format it properly.

• I took the drive out, put it in my old xp rig and formatted it in there through disc management (it was given the drive letter E: in that machine), then plugged it back into my sig rig and proceeded to install 64-bit windows, allowing it to do it's own format (which is of course a quick format and not a full one). I then ran all of the updates and then Sp1 could be installed I did that as well.
  
  
• However, now when I take the windows disc out of the drive and set the boot priority to hard drive in the bios, it gives me the following message: "Boot Disk Missing, please insert system disc and press enter" (or something very close to that). I press enter and it just keeps showing the message.
  
  
• Next step is to put the Windows disc back in, restart, set the boot priority to CD, then of course it asks me if I want to boot from CD press any key (if I don't do this and just let it run through, then it gives me the boot disk error). So I let it get to the first page of installation, I cancel, it restarts, this time when the boot from cd prompt comes up, I don't press enter, and it boots into windows aboslutely fine.
  
  
• So now I take the disc out of the drive, restart, and get the Boot Disk error, but if I leave the windows disc in the drive it boots without issue.

So you can see why I am confused I hope? What do you guys reckon? It almost seems as if it isn't seeing the drive as the windows until the windows disc kinda points it to it? Any idea's what to do? I couldn't find a low level format utility for my drive, that ultimate boot cd thing wouldn't full format.

 

dont know why but im thinking x64 sata drivers.... would using the 32-bit driver cause windows not to see the drive...

 

goose

are u sure you properly nuked the drive, removed boot sectors and checked it properly. do a proper format!
and a odd one ive had before is issues with my primary hdd being on sata channel 1, try 2. its a striker thing!

and at least you can install sp1, i get to 12% downloaded and it craps out, with error code 8073712, and ive googled for all the solutions and tried them all, only solution appears to be reinstall vista. and i am loathed to do it! there has to be a fix for it!

 

The only way to get the drive in a correct condition for a fresh install is to take it back to a RAW state. The simplest way to do this is to remove the partitions eg Fdisk then delete all the partitions from there. Then XP/Vista/whatever can set up and format the drive itself. Using a disk preformatted often causes so many problems, as you are experiencing.

 

Have you tried fisk /mbr from the recovery console?

 

I have managed to fix it without doing anything too drastic.

I unplugged my other two sata drives and booted only with the main OS drive (the raptor X), this booted without issue, I turned it off, plugged the other two drives in and it now works perfectly! It was almost ass if the bios/cmos needed to map to the OS drive without other options on the Sata bus.

As for people having issues with updates, I had the same thing (not with sp1, but a couple of others), I kept trying until I finally got the power button with the update logo on it in the start menu, shut down and it installed those updates perfectly.

Not sure why you can't get Sp1 to download though dime, are all your other updates 100% up to date? I was doing it off a clean install with a properly formatted hdd so I can't really give any experience of doing it on anything but a blank canvas. I didn't bother doing it on 32-bit because I knew I was formatting.

btw - hooorah for selecting which drive to defrag now!