Unable to Boot

Well I've had my xps m1530 for almost 2 months and everything has been running smoothly. But yesterday when I booted up my computer windows didn't start up and a black screen with windows boot manager popped up. It says:

Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix:
insert windows installation disk, restart, and repair

File: \Boot\BCD
Status: 0xc000000f
Info: An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data

well I restarted and loaded the windows vista cd but when I got to repair there was no os in the table to click on
Also, I have no system restores... reformatted a couple weeks back and never got around to making any

looks like there is a problem with my hd but I'm not sure...

So if anyone here has had this happen to them or has any idea how to solve this I would really appreciate it.

 

I wonder if this is the problem people get when they reformat/reinstall without either "preparing" the drive with the Media Direct DVD or getting rid of the Media Direct partition. When they accidentally use the Media Direct button instead of the power button to start the computer, they get a mess. Sometimes using the Media Direct button again straightens it out, sometimes not.

 

you might try fixmbr...

questions;

1.) did you format before reformatting? or just ''reformated'' when u got it?

2.) does mediaDirect boot work?

 

sounds more like your BCD is damaged

try this

http://www.vistaclues.com/how-to-manually-repair-bcd-when-windows-wont-start/

 

I reformatted a little after I got the new computer and just clean installed vista and media direct

And the mediaDirect boot does work


The vista partition must be corrupted in some way... does not even show up in system repair

 

Ok i went to the command prompt but when i did bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd and it asked me to add my windows installation to the boot list I got:
The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable

any ideas? =\

 

Well, it's possible you've got a failing hard drive and some critical system files are on areas of the disk that are now unreadable.

Do you happen to have an external enclosure you can plug the drive into? If so you could remove the drive from the notebook, plug it into the external enclosure, connect it to another PC and run a full chkdsk with surface scan to see if there are bad sectors on the disk.

Or if that seems like too much trouble you could just reformat and try reinstalling the OS from scratch. I'd definitely run a surface scan after that though, even if everything seems fine.

 

I may just reformat again.. will it wipe all my files or is there a way to preserve them?

 

if you just recover from the partition you may keep the files, ofc,the files on my documents, etc... wil lbe erased, but the ones inside program files, and stuff, will work, but, they wont be configuerd to launch, so you'll need to re-download... backup ur stuff to another folder...
maybe it works...

 

If you reformat, all will be lost. If there are important files on the drive that you need to recover and you can't boot into the OS, then about your only option is to connect the drive to another working system and see if it's readable enough to salvage anything.

I'd really be worried about a physical problem with the drive though. Even if a reinstall goes OK, make sure you do a thorough surface scan afterwards.

 

Ok i'm going to try and place drive in my old inspiron and salvage.. hope it works