Help with Vista restoration needed

i have a little problem and will try to explain everything in detail.

I have an old installation of Vista on C: partition (Primary), and decided to make a whole new installation on partition D: (Logical) with Vista SP1. Since i cannot afford to lose my current system, that way i tried to do it in my free time, so my old installation oc C: is always ready to use for work, until the new one is finished.

So, after a week i decided that the new installation on D: is ready to become a no.1 (and only) system - i've made a backup of it using TI11, then booted to disk director, deleted both C: and D: partitons, wiped them, made brand new C: primary partition, and restored backup to it....

Well, now that new Vista can't boot (missing BOOTMGR), and it's all about that primary/logical thing.

Then i recreated the first situation - 2 partitons - c: primary (old Vista), d: logical (new Vista) and want to do everything from the begining.

How do i put this new Vista from D: to a c: primary partition, and to avoid that BOOTMGR error?

 

Likewise:

The original problem occurred because Vista installed all of its boot files to partition 1. When you restored only partition 2, there were no boot files.

One way to fix:

1. Copy the files bootmgr and the /Boot folder from your first partition to your second partition. These are hidden so you will have to turn on viewing of both hidden and protected operating system files to see them. I'm not positive, but Vista may not let you do a copy when the OS is running, so you may need to boot to the Vista DVD and do it from the command line.
2. While running Vista on the second partition, prepare its BCD (Boot Configuration Database) to be partition-independent. Refer to this post and change the three entries per post #1. Do not reboot your machine until after finishing the next step. *Note - you have to be sure that you are editing the BCD on partition 2 and not the one on partition 1, so refer to the HELP file (type bcdedit /?) to see how to direct your commands to the desired BCD.
3. Make an image of your second partition which now contains the boot manager and its files.
4. Boot to DD on the recovery CD and delete all partitions.
5. Boot to TI on the recovery CD and restore the desired Vista install to one primary, active partition the size of your drive.

That should work. If you get any error messages on startup then use the Vista DVD to do a repair.

 

In working on the the instructions for separating an XP/Vista installation that was setup using Vista's boot manager, I've tried to copy the files using both XP and Vista and got the same results: Access Denied. The files need to be copied from outside of Windows. The Vista DVD's Command Prompt works. I haven't tried using a BartPE, VistaPE or Live Linux CD.

 

Thanks, Paul. Another slight hitch will be that the BCD will contain entries for both versions of Vista, so you will probably want to clean out the old entry after you get this to boot properly. That can be done with bcdedit. When you get to that point, post the output of the command bcdedit here and one of us will help you figure it out.

 

Likewise:

I hope you have not invested too much time in trying out my proposed solution in post #2 -- it isn't going to work.

On your original installation, partition #2 has Vista on the D: drive. If you follow my advice and restore this image to the first partition it will become the C: drive after restoration, and nothing will work properly. You will be unable to log into your existing profile and, even if you could, registry pointers will be incorrect.

So what alternatives are there?

1. Modify your current C: Vista installation to be just like the one you prefer on the D: drive by installing software, changing settings, etc. Once it is set up like you prefer, then delete the D: partition.

2. Leave the boot files [bootmgr and the /Boot folder] on the C: partition but delete everything else. Using DD, shrink the size of the C partition as small as possible - you should be able to get it down below 0.1 GB. Then enlarge the D partition to the left. This will leave Vista as the D: drive but with more disk space and it will still boot from the first partition.

Speaking of boot, you will have to do a boot repair with the Vista DVD after enlarging the D: partition because you will have moved the starting sector of the partition.

Maybe someone else reading this will have a third or fourth suggestion...

I am sorry to have misled you.

 

I haven't tried this, but it may work. If the D: image were restored into the C: position, the boot repairs would be needed. And, as you say, the drive letter would be wrong because Vista would want to assign C: to the Vista partition (now Primary/Active).

However, after a failed boot into Vista (as in your quote above), the drive letter may be able to just be changed by using the Registry Editor from the Vista DVD's Command Prompt. Load the SYSTEM hive from the Vista partition, change the MountedDevices drive from C: to D:, unload the hive, exit the Registry Editor, exit the Command Prompt and restart the computer.

I have tested this by deliberately changing the drive letter and then booting into Vista. I got stopped at the "Preparing your desktop..." screen. I then did the above procedure to change it back to C: and it booted up just fine.

Before this test, I didn't know you could do this change from the Vista DVD (I've done it before from BartPE and VistaPE).

 

It's OK, i just read what you wrote but didn't have time to really try to do it. The real problem is that i invested lot of free time to install the new system, all the programs on it and tune the way i want, thinking that it will just work....

Nevertheless, i'm gonna try your's and MudCrab's advice, but if it fails a whole new installation will be required.

Thank you both for your effort. I'll get back after trying this one.