OS Selector Deactivates Every so Often

[plettner]

I am using Disk Director 10 (build 2160) and have a HDD partitioned as below.
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| Vista Ultimate 32-bit |
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| Windows XP Pro SP2 |
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| Windows Server 2003 |
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DD10 was installed in Vista. I subsequently installed Windows XP and then Server 2003 at each stage ensuring the OS would should in OS selector which it did.

All OS's work fine. I can boot the computer and select any and it will load into that OS fine and it's happy days.

However, evey so often, OSS will deactivate for whatever reason. I cannot determine under what condition is deactivates but it just does. When it has deactivated, it will just load into the default OS which is Vista. Just after the BIOS screen finishes, there is an error MBR Error 3 before it proceeds to load into Vista.

It is not a time-out setting (eg. 6 sec countdown.) becuase I have a second HDD (which is a dynamic disc) and OSS always indicates when OSS is active upon boot-up that Dynamic Disks are not supported. I must always click OK to go past this screen into the actual selector screen.

I find that I can reactivate under Disk Director within Vista or the recovery CD and it will work for maybe 4 or 5 slections and then deactivate.

Any ideas?

[MudCrab]

This problem has been reported before. I have not experienced it myself often enough to say what may cause it on internal drives. Just today, in my VM, OSS was disabled for some reason and needed to be reactivated (there was no MBR error message, though).

The symptoms are the same as when OSS tries to "take over" an external drive (a USB flashdrive or hard drive, for example). Perhaps OSS is trying to "take itself over" and corrupting its own MBR.

If the computer's BIOS supports blocking MBR writes (virus protection), you could enable it and see if it helps. This may cause conflicts, though.

You might also disable the OS Selector Reinstall Service and see if that makes a difference.

Try and pay attention to any actions taken prior to the corruption. Since it seems to be occurring frequently on your system, you may be able to pin it down.

[plettner]

Thanks for the reply.

I tried to reformat the entire driver and just install a clean Vista on the drive. So far, so good.

I then installed Disk Director and it detected the sole Vista installation and added it to the menu. But, alas, after a couple of boots, the MRB Error appeared and OS Slector just skips the menu and goes stright into Vista.

[MudCrab]

The only place I've noticed this frequently is in VPC 2007. It works for few times and then you get the MBR error and Vista boots. It may have happened once on my Vista/XP/XP computer, but I don't remember for sure.

I'm not sure what causes it. Perhaps the OSS Reinstall Service isn't working correctly and it's actually corrupting the MBR.