"OS Error" on Start Up?

[wolffenjugend]

The other day I had a problem with a faulty hard drive. While troubleshooting I shut down and then disconnected and reconnected all my drives and SATA cables. When I rebooted I got a black screen of death with "OS Error" message. I'm using Vista (64x) and it's been a couple years since I installed so I figured it was a good time to do a fresh install on a different drive. That install was successful and I started using it.

Then, while changing drives and rebooting, my original Vista install started working again (not sure how but I think after it auto ran a chkdsk on startup). I'm still using my original Vista install because when I try to go back to my fresh Vista install, surprise!, I get the same "OS Error" message on start up.

I've checked BIOS and all my hard drives are recognized and it's set to boot from the fresh Vista install but I keep getting the message.

I've rebooted with the Vista disk to perform a repair but it doesn't list the fresh Vista OS as an option to repair. I tried the general repair option but no success.

I did some research on the net and the only thing I could find is perhaps it can't find the drivers for the hard drive but I have been using that drive for many months without problem, BIOS recognizes it, and in fact I can access it right now from my original Vista install.

Can anyone help?

 

[wolffenjugend]

UPDATE:

I ran chkdsk on the drive and only a few minor little errors that were corrected. Still get the OS Error message on start up though.

I again tried to repair with the Vista CD and this time noted that there was 1 error related to "does not have valid system partition." Which makes me think it's not recognizing the drive. Which is strange because I was able to initially do a fresh Vista install on the drive and it was working fine when I did.