On Sat, 9 May 2009 14:37:10 -0500, ahadden <guest@unknown-email.com>
wrote:
[color=blue]
>
>So today I decided to install vista on my main computer. I changed the
>Boot sequence to CD first, then HDD. Everything ran fine and vista
>seemingly loaded perfectly. After moving some files from my backup drive
>back onto my main one and installing some drivers, I was asked to
>restart my computer (for the drivers) so I did. Remembering that the
>boot sequence was still set on CD first, and since my driver CD was
>still in the drive, I decided to set the boot sequence back to the way I
>had it with XP: HDD and then CD. After doing this I quit BIOS and tried
>to boot, but I kept getting a message saying: DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT
>SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.
>
>So I restarted the computer again, this time with my Vista CD in the
>drive, and again, the computer wouldn't boot and told me to enter a boot
>disk. Not knowing what to do, I went back into BIOS and changed the boot
>sequence back to CD first, then HD. After doing this, and restarting
>with the Vista CD in the drive, my computer booted up with no problems
>whatsoever. I tried reinstalling Vista (twice), reformatting the target
>hard drive, changing the boot sequence around, pretty much everything I
>could think of.
>
>I went into the system recovery options, ran bootrec.exe/fixMbr,
>/fixboot, and /scanOS. None of these options fixed the problem, although
>I noticed that the /scanOS function told me it could find no Vista
>installations...I'm 100% sure that Vista is installed on my HD, but for
>some reason it isn't recognised. What am i doing wrong?
>
>Another thing that seemed fishy about the installation process was that
>when it asked me to choose a drive to install windows on, my data/backup
>drive (200gb) was labeled as Disk 0 and tagged as primary, while my
>target drive (80gb) was labeled as Disk 1 and also tagged as Primary.
>I've set the boot order to check my target drive (Disk 1) first so this
>shouldn't affect anything, just something weird I noticed.
>
>I guess my overall question is, why wouldn't it boot from my HD, and
>how can I get it back to normal? Thanks in advance for the help![/color]

First, find out what's going on by booting to Vista, running Disk
Management, and checking which drive the System partition is on. This
is the drive that the bios must be set to boot from.

During Windows setup, the drive that the bios is set to boot from as
specified in the Hard Disk Drives or Hard Disk Boot Priority setting
is the drive containing the active primary partition that Windows
setup places the boot files, making it the System partition. However,
if the Bios has a bug in it, then Windows setup places the boot files
on another drive that it believes to be the boot drive.