Vista boot manager and SATA

[nasz]

Had a running PC with 2 SATA drives and Vista Ultimate, then decided to replace the second SATA (D:\) drive for a larger one.

So originally my system looked like this:
C:\ 500Gb System Drive
D:\ 320Gb Data Drive

Opened the box, replaced the drive, turned the PC on and... cannot boot.

Ran the Vista Repair facility - which didn't work, ran it again and selected the Command Line.

Tried to delete the BCD and then rebuild - but got a error 'element not found'... Tried reinstalling my C:\ drive from a working backup and again no boot (hanging on a flashing cursor)

Reinstalled Vista, which worked but wanted to install to 'D', checked the drives - all okay - restored from backup and again no boot. So I'm guessing my BCD is installed onto the D drive and not my C drive! Which means my backup wont work because the D drive has been replaced (and the original wiped).

I need my backup version (apps and various stuff) but how can I get it working?

Any ideas!

 

[akhilles]

Post the specs.

Go to bios, double-check your harddisk boot order. Every time you swap harddisks, the order may be changed. The 1st one must be the OS drive.

 

[nasz]

Checked BIOS and definitely in the right order.

Specification (current)
CPU: Intel® Core™2 Duo E8300
Memory (RAM): Geil 4GB Blackdragon (2x2GB)
Motherboard: Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus
Operating System: VISTA ULTIMATE SP1
1st Hard Disk: 500GB SERIAL ATA II
2nd Hard Disk: 750GB SERIAL ATA II
CD/DVD Drive: 20x Dual Layer LightScribe DVD Writer
Graphics Card: BFG 768MB GEFORCE 8800GTX
Sound Card : Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty

 

[wesley_huddleston1]

Vista places the boot manager on a separate hard rive sometimes. the file name is BOOTMGR. I had the same problem and I moved the boot mgr from the old drive to the new one and it works now. the file is visible with a Linux live disk. it will be in the root directory.

 

[akhilles]

^^^ That's what I thought. My guess is his bootmgr is on the removed drive. Windows has never been smart enough to boot from anywhere other than that root drive + the bootmgr/NTLDR which can be on another drive.

Check Boot device priority & Hard disk drives. The latter contains the order of the hard disks.

http://i.neoseeker.com/neo_image/153366/article/asus-p5n32e-sli/boot_thumb.jpg

 

[nasz]

thanks guys - will check it out when I get home from work