After power failure can't boot... need help!

Running Vista 64. We had a power failure and the UPS shut down the system with Hibernate. After re-powering on, the system no longer recognizes the C drive as a boot drive (it keeps wanting to go past disk 0 to the CD drive). I'm assuming that it won't see the disk as a boot disk because the MBR is corrupted. I have a feeling the UPS shutdown software must of written something to the boot record for some reason and goofed it up (I have the disks set for AHCI so maybe that has something to do with it). I put the Vista install CD in and clicked on recover (so that I could re-write the MBR). But when presented with the list of OS's it's empty and it asks me to load the drivers for the disk drives. But the dialog it gives me wants a "System Information" file type. Anyway, using that dialog I can browse the C drive (obviously the recovery software can read the AHCI disk OK!) and everything seems to be there (re-enforcing my hope that it is just the MBR).

I have an Acronis image file but it is a few days old. If all it is is the MBR I'd like to just fix that. Ideas on what I should do? Thank you in advance for any help you can give me.

 

jsl,

Can you do a chkdsk /f

 

Hello jsl,

Thank you for your interesting in Acronis True Image

If the issue still persists you can restore MBR from the image. Boot computer in question from Acronis bootable disc choose Restore option -> Restore Disk and Partitions -> Select Restore MBR and Track 0. If issue concerns MBR it should fix it.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

I don't want to be a pessimist, but the Vista install DVD should see the boot drive even if it is totally blank like a new drive. That's how you install Vista the first time.

Since it can't see the drive, are you sure the drive hasn't failed?

If you go into the System BIOS when first booting up, is the hard drive listed?

The suggestion to boot from the TI rescue CD is a good one. If that can't see the drive, it's further evidence that it has failed. If it can see it, you can restore the MBR as suggested.