1 Topic by msv (edited by msv 2009-03-25 19:42:03)

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Topic: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

This is pretty much a repost of a topic I've made on the NeoSmart forums. I'll repost the first post, since it explains my situation

tl;dr I've resized my Vista partition with GParted, afterwards booting up gave me a blinking cursor after POST - followed Using GParted to Resize Your Windows Vista Partition :: the How-To Geek and after that Recovering the Vista Bootloader from the DVD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki among other guides, and nothing works. Now I have another Vista install on a new ntfs partition in the freed up space, but still booting won't work, blinking cursor after POST.


More detailed version -

Over the course of the evening/night I've read a lot of things about GParted and restoring Vista's BCD/mbr etc., sadly though nothing seems to work. I haven't been able to get any further than a blinking cursor for the past 10hrs.

This is my setup, ms-1013 laptop with 120gb HD, which WAS 1 NTFS partition. Now I wanted to make room (about 25gb) for a linux partition, so I could use it for my studies. I was told it was pretty much harmless, and after reading this, I decided I'd go for it and use GParted(since Vista's shrink wouldn't give me more than 10-15gb space) from a Sabayon 4 r2 lite LiveCD.

All well and good, I moved the ntfs partition to the left and shrank it by 24gb (more or less), which was a succes. Upon booting, the cursor was blinking (not the error mentioned in the article, mind), so I went to the aformentioned guide and restarded my laptop, now with the Vista CD in it. Booted it up, repaired and restarded, but alas, still a blinking cursor.

After looking for a while I came upon this nifty guide, from this site even. Since I had already tried steps 1, 2 and 3, it was time for the nuclear holocaust step. Followed the steps, but it didn't work. There was one discrepancy though - del C:\boot\BCD didn't work for me. I didn't mind it at first, but after this failed I checked and noticed that the BCD file was write protected, no matter what. cmd.exe's dir command would only even find it when I'd specifically used the /a:s attribute to search for it.

After some dicking around, I opened another instance of cmd.exe, this time from the C:\ partition (via notepad). I found that only this allowed me to delete the BCD file. Me glad that it was finally working, I tried the tutorial again. Well, you can guess it, it still didn't work. Nothing more than a blinking cursor.

Then I decided I'd had it, and went to install Vista in the remaining space, so I might use EasyBCD to do all the immensely tedious work of trying different BCD setups again again for me. With that installed, I assumed it would at least show me the selection screen and allowing me to select the correct Vista boot, but no. Again a blinking cursor.

That was about an hour ago, and I've tried to remove the BCD from the C:\ partition and all references to it. Doesn't work either. I've also set D:\ as the default. So I don't know where to look anymore, I can only imagine there being something wrong with my MBR if it won't even show the selection screen.

I'm really getting tired from this, and it seems I've somehow screwed things up. I'm hoping people here can shed some light on this situation of mine, because I can't afford to lose the information on the drives, and reinstalling would mean an even bigger hassle (I'd need to download a 15gb Office version from school servers @ a measly 100-200kbps, among other things).

Since then, I've installed another instance of Vista on a newly created partition in the unallocated space of disk 0. The installation that I'm trying to save is on partition 1, the other is on partition 2. When partition 2 is the active partition, booting is not a problem. It is however when partition 1 is active. No matter what I do, I only get a blinking cursor after post. I've tried the normal System Repair options from the Vista CD, also the bootrec /fixmbr etc. countless of times, but nothing works.

I've used GParted 0.3.9 off of the Sabayon 4 r2 lite MCE livecd. The topic can be found here.

2 Reply by cmdr (edited by cmdr 2009-03-24 23:26:24)

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

Hello msv,

I accidentally repeated my post, see next post.

Regards
cmdr

3 Reply by cmdr (edited by cmdr 2009-03-24 23:24:18)

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

Hello msv,

msv wrote:

When partition 2 is the active partition, booting is not a problem. It is however when partition 1 is active. No matter what I do, I only get a blinking cursor after post.

this means, that your Master Boot Record' s starting code is correct ( no further bootrec /FixMbr necessary!). I assume, that trouble comes with the partitioning values of partition one. BTW, it's not quite clear: you actually get access with your second Vista installation to the files on the first volume, don't you ? Is it possible to do a "chkdsk /f /r" to the corrupted drive ? When the bootflag was set to partition one, did you also try "bootrec /FixBoot" from your Recovery CD to write a new Volume Boot Record ? This of course only works, if the volume is visible.

Maybe on resizing your partition one, there was a tiny shift (move to the right of the left border of the partiton) to align to a cylinder border. I recently had a similar case. Best would be, you give us the print-out of "fdisk -l -u" (see the above mentioned thread).

Regards
cmdr

PS: Version 0.3.9 is rather old. Please download the latest stable version as ISO-Image, burn it and work with it from now on.

4 Reply by msv

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

cmdr wrote:

Hello msv,

msv wrote:

When partition 2 is the active partition, booting is not a problem. It is however when partition 1 is active. No matter what I do, I only get a blinking cursor after post.

this means, that your Master Boot Record' s starting code is correct ( no further bootrec /FixMbr necessary!). I assume, that trouble comes with the partitioning values of partition one. BTW, it's not quite clear: you actually get access with your second Vista installation to the files on the first volume, don't you ?

Yes, not only that, but when the BCD is located on partition 2 and 2's active, there's no problem booting the Vista install on partition 1.

Is it possible to do a "chkdsk /f /r" to the corrupted drive ?

I will do this.

When the bootflag was set to partition one, did you also try "bootrec /FixBoot" from your Recovery CD to write a new Volume Boot Record ? This of course only works, if the volume is visible.

I've tried this many a times, the way described in the article I linked to in my quoted post.

Maybe on resizing your partition one, there was a tiny shift (move to the right of the left border of the partiton) to align to a cylinder border. I recently had a similar case. Best would be, you give us the print-out of "fdisk -l -u" (see the above mentioned thread).

Okay, I'll get to it.

5 Reply by msv

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

Just performed "chkdsk /f /r". Afterwards I marked partition 1 active, then loaded up EasyBCD and had it write a new mbr.

Now restarted, didn't work still, so I'm booting the Vista CD and performing Startup Repair. If it doesn't work, I'll load up the Sabayon LiveCD and do fdisk -l -u

6 Reply by msv

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

Woops, looks like I'll be needing the GParted liveCD. I'll download it.

7 Reply by msv (edited by msv 2009-03-25 02:41:51)

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

Hm, don't have writeable CD's, nor can the laptop boot from USB. Schade. I'll post the results tomorrow then.

Edit: Oh, wasn't as root - I've got the fdisk output:

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x134c134b



   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sda1   *          63   185213384    92606661    7  HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda2       185214976   234438655    24611840    7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk 

/dev/sdb: 2000 MB, 2000682496 bytes
64 heads, 63 sectors/track, 969 cylinders, total 3907583 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x00000000



   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sdb1             129     3907007     1953439+   6  FAT16

it concerns /dev/sda1

8 Reply by msv

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

I have the info from MC_HxEd

Sadly I don't have a place to upload the files to. But I'll post the contents anyway -

drvs.dat

    .==========================.
    |    Fixed Disk 1: hda     |
    '=========================='

    Model name : ata-FUJITSU_MHV2120AH_NT59T752HE1K
    Disk ID = 0x134c134b

    Start = 0
    End   = 234441647
    Total Size  = 234441648 (512 Byte blocks)
    Total Size  = 120034123776 (Bytes)

       _______ 
      |_==|==_|
      ~~~~~~~~~
    Physical Data :

    cylinders = 14593
    heads     = 255
    sectors   = 63
    blocks/cylinder = 16065
    bytes/cylinder  = 8225280

      ___  ___ 
     /   \/   \
     \___/\___/
    Partition(s) :

    .------.
    | hda1 |
    '------'
    Part.ID = 0x07 < HPFS/NTFS  >
    Volume Name = 

    Start   = 63
     End     = 185213384
    Size    = 185213322 (512 Byte blocks)
    Size    = 94829220864 (Bytes)

    .------.
    | hda2 |
    '------'
    Part.ID = 0x07 < HPFS/NTFS   >
    Volume Name = 

    Start   = 185214976
     End     = 234438655
    Size    = 49223680 (512 Byte blocks)
    Size    = 25202524160 (Bytes)

    Unallocated Slack = 2992 (512 Byte blocks)
    Unallocated Slack = 1531904 (Bytes)

    .==========================.
    |  Removable Disk 1: sda   |
    '=========================='

    Model name : usb-SanDisk_Cruzer_485741080F03654B-0:0
    Disk ID = 0x00000000

    Start = 0
    End   = 3907582
    Total Size  = 3907583 (512 Byte blocks)
    Total Size  = 2000682496 (Bytes)

       _______ 
      |_==|==_|
      ~~~~~~~~~
    Physical Data :

    cylinders = 969
    heads     = 64
    sectors   = 63
    blocks/cylinder = 4032
    bytes/cylinder  = 2064384

      ___  ___ 
     /   \/   \
     \___/\___/
    Partition(s) :

    .------.
    | sda1 |
    '------'
    Part.ID = 0x06 < FAT16   >
    Volume Name = 

    Start   = 129
     End     = 3907007
    Size    = 3906879 (512 Byte blocks)
    Size    = 2000322048 (Bytes)

    Unallocated Slack = 575 (512 Byte blocks)
    Unallocated Slack = 294400 (Bytes)

First three lines of bytes of hda1

EB 52 90 4E 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00 
00 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 00 08 00 00 
00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 80 21 0A 0B 00 00 00 00

9 Reply by class413

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

mediafire.com is free and easily accessible for upload and download (no delay).

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

10 Reply by cmdr (edited by cmdr 2009-03-25 18:29:10)

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

Sorry, double post again !

cmdr

11 Reply by cmdr

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

cmdr wrote:

Hello msv,

good work ! ... and same infirmity, same remedy : the "Hidden Sector" value is wrong : 0x800 ( = 2048) . It should be 0x3F (=63).

Ergo, you have to correct it as follows (with "MC_HxEd"):

EB 52 90 4E 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00 
00 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 3F 00 00 00 <-- only 2 Bytes !
00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 80 21 0A 0B 00 00 00 00

It's now proven (together with the other thread), that this value only matters on boot ( transition from Master Boot Code to Volume boot code) and not with Vista's BOOTMGR.

Your first partition ends at a cylinder border (which is good), but your second does NOT start with the next.  I see an unallocated gap of 1592 sectors (= 815104 Bytes), which is unnecessary. I would recreate the second partition without gap for your intended reorganization.

Regards
cmdr

12 Reply by msv

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

*sniff* It worked, IT WORKED!! I've been at this for the last two days, with no end in sight, and now it works big_smile

I owe you one man, thank you for the help!

cmdr wrote:

Your first partition ends at a cylinder border (which is good), but your second does NOT start with the next.  I see an unallocated gap of 1592 sectors (= 815104 Bytes), which is unnecessary. I would recreate the second partition without gap for your intended reorganization.

Didn't even notice that, thanks for the heads up. I'm gonna flush that partition and create a new one in it anyway, since Linux is going to be installed there.

Again, thanks for the help, I'm really glad to have finally found the answer, I really hate not knowing that tongue

Cheers.

13 Reply by gregw

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

cmdr wrote:
cmdr wrote:

Hello msv,

good work ! ... and same infirmity, same remedy : the "Hidden Sector" value is wrong : 0x800 ( = 2048) . It should be 0x3F (=63).

Ergo, you have to correct it as follows (with "MC_HxEd"):

EB 52 90 4E 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00 
00 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 3F 00 00 00 <-- only 2 Bytes !
00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 80 21 0A 0B 00 00 00 00

It's now proven (together with the other thread), that this value only matters on boot ( transition from Master Boot Code to Volume boot code) and not with Vista's BOOTMGR.

Your first partition ends at a cylinder border (which is good), but your second does NOT start with the next.  I see an unallocated gap of 1592 sectors (= 815104 Bytes), which is unnecessary. I would recreate the second partition without gap for your intended reorganization.

Regards
cmdr

I have almost the same exact issue as msv.  My vista partition won't load, just a blinking cursor.  I can see all the files fine in linux, but it just won't boot.  Vista is on my second partition. 

Second partition starts at sector 192780 and ends at 421224299.  First 3 lines of sda2 are:

33 C0 8E 4E 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 0C F1 02 00
00 00 00 00 09 75 13 83 5F 6E 18 19 00 00 00 00

I converted the starting sector into hex (2f10c)  but not sure where to put it.

14 Reply by cmdr

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

Hello Greg,

gregw wrote:

Second partition starts at sector 192780 and ends at 421224299.  First 3 lines of sda2 are:

33 C0 8E 4E 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 0C F1 02 00 -->00 02 F1 0C =  192,780
00 00 00 00 09 75 13 83 5F 6E 18 19 00 00 00 00

I converted the starting sector into hex (2f10c)  but not sure where to put it.

first I have a deception for you : Hidden Sector value is already correct ! The value must also be in the partition table of second primary partition ( 4 Bytes starting with Byte 0x1D6 in sector 0; same Intel Little Endian format ) as starting sector ... and  I have no doubt, it really is.  Use "fdisk -l -u" to check or use "MC_HxEd" to inspect MBR directly. -

The excerpt of your Volume Boot Record shows a size of 0x19 18 6E 5F (light-green) for the second partition. It's end sector is consequently 0x 02 F1 0C + 0x19 18 6E 5F = 0x19 1B 5F 6B ( = 421,224,299 ). Absolutely correct !

Now ,whats wrong  ?  The red values, of course,  as every pupil knows . If it's not an ultra new feature by Microsoft, you should find the following values, which are constant : 80 00 80 00 (in this sequence from left to right).  Why can they have influence on the boot process ? The first 0x80 (=128; numeric value for the first bootable / active  harddisk) is used to get the drive parameters by BIOS Interrupt. 0x09, your value, is unknown and sends the boot process to Nirwana.

I think, reading this thread will guide you, how to correct these four bytes.

Good luck
cmdr

15 Reply by Uglegeek

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Re: [SOLVED]Trouble booting Vista Ultimate x64 after using GPart

DAMM!!!   ...you guys rock !

I'd wanted to give Win7RC a spin - not from scratch, but as an upgrade to my vista. I have an extra 500GB disk that I wanted to spend on this. My vista was on a 700GB disk so it had to be shrinked to fit on the 500GB - no problem for gparted - done that tons of time on linux and XP.

Unfortunately after shrink, all hell broke loose - All I had was a blinking cursor, and windows 'repair' claims everything is allright.

After spending 18h straight on trying to fix MBR, bootsect, BCD and what ever hope I could hang on to, I found this thread!
Problem WAS in my case also a shift from 0x8000 to 0x003F - now my vista is alive again for a short while :-)

Guys - you saved my day!!!!   THANK YOU!