So my computer won't start up now.

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information"

So I'm on my Inspiron 1520...I started up Windows Media Center on my Vista, set it up, then tried to watch TV, it froze, so I turned it off with the power button.

I hit the Media Direct Key just to see if it would start up, but apparently it doesn't, and now I have that message. I hit the Media Direct Key again and no luck, nor would turning the laptop off and back on again. Holding F12 and going into the boot menu doesn't work, and apparently starting it up in Safe Mode doesn't work either.

EDIT - It does power up, but other than that, all I get is the error message.


How can I fix this? If at all possible, without a Vista CD because I don't have access to one until Tuesday.

 

From what I can see...it looks like your hard drive died.

 

I certainly hope that's not the case, it was working perfectly a second before.

 

You could make sure the hard drive is securely connected. Something else you could try is booting from a Linux live disc like Ubuntu.

 

yeah you can try running one of the various boot cd's to analyze the status of your hardware

 

I don't think it's necessarily the hdd (although, I also wouldn't be that surprised if it was - those things'll die in the oddest ways).

Shutting down the system with the power button probably left something messed up on the boot procedures. MS has a knowledgebase article on an error with precisely the same wording, KB314477, so the procedures for correcting the error in that KB article may be helpful with your error, even though it's in _Vista.

 

MediaDirect uses the other partition of your hard drive, which your machine seems to be intent on booting to, and that may be dead for some reason.

Try resetting your BIOS, see if that helps anything.

 

How would I go about doing that? I don't see it in the BIOS menu.

 

You need to download BIOS updater, burn it on CD and boot from CD then.

 

Do you guys think updating the BIOS will solve the problem? I don't have access to a burner either. I might however be able to get the Vista disc tomorrow however, any insights on what to do then?

 

I don't think it will help, as Shyster1 said, the brutal power off must have interrupted a normal shut off of windows leaving some vital files on the air. I would try a clean install of windows.

 

Apparently doing startup repair and system restore doesn't work. The operating system got moved to D somehow and Mediadirect got moved to C. Any ideas?

 

Windows Boot Manager
identifier : {bootmgr}
device : partition=C:
default : <current>
display order : random numbers
bootsequence : memdiag
timeout : 30

Windows Boot Loader
<numbers same as bootmgr>
device : partition=D:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description : Windows Vista Home Premium Recovery
OS device : partition=D:
systemroot \Windows

I typed this into bcdedit earlier to try and fix it >.< No luck
bcdedit /set (bootmgr) bootmgr mgr

I think my boot file is corrupted, anyone got any ideas how to fix it?

 

That makes sense, and, if I'm guessing correctly that Media Center essentially "reboots" your computer on the fly, then what may have happened is that the hard shutdown left the system in a state where it was still set to boot off the d: partition used by Media Center; however, that may not be a full cold boot, but just a half-a$5ed warm-boot that depends on certain fundamental parts of the OS still remaining in system memory from the normal cold boot off of the c: partition.

Now, is there any way that you can get the thing up and running well enough to take a look at the drives and, in particular, verify which partition is set as the active system partition?

If not, you may need to take the HDD out, put another one in and install OS onto that hdd - if you cannot do _Vista because you don't have recovery disks, then try a good linux distribution - most of them are better at reading NTFS file systems - i.e., they give more info - than the standard Windows explorer is (I think you can get 80GB hdds for about $50 or so now, so it might be worth the $$ to get one - you can always put it into the external enclosure you'll also need to buy for my little experiment after you're done and use the second hdd as external storage - I've ended up with two I use that way).

You might also try downloading Acronis True Image, burning it to a DVD, and then try using the DVD to boot - I know you can create a boot DVD to use for recovery operations, but I don't know if you can immediately boot from the True Image disk right from the get-go.

If you can get booted with True Image, or alternatively with Acronis Disk Director, you should be able to inspect the drive to find out which partition is the system, i.e., boot, partition, and which partition is marked active.

If you can do that, you want to make sure that the system partition (which should be c:, not d is marked active. You should also make sure that your bootloader configuration shows the c: partition as the boot partition. Now, I've never tinkered around with _Vista, but based on teh snippet from bcedit you posted, I would suggest setting both the BootManager device and the Boot Loader device, and the OS device to c: - because that's where the full version of _Vista that gets loaded on a normal boot is located; the d:\ partition is just the rump, ersatz "OS" used by media center, so I don't think you want to try booting into there.

Ok, I'm reading as I'm typing, so most of my hoo-ha about Acronis can probably be disregarded since you can at least get access to the basic system to tinker with the boot manager. I would suggest first trying to set everything boot-related to the c:\ partition, and I would also go into your BIOS, look for the boot order, and make sure that the hard drive is specified as the first device the BIOS should try to boot from - if that device can be expanded, then make sure that it's pointing to the C:\ drive.

Finally, if this doesn't help, try resetting the CMOS data; according to an old version of the Phoenix BIOS boot specification I saw a while back, the boot order is typically saved by the BIOS in a table in nonvolatile memory, and if my suspicion about the ersatz warm-boot from media center is correct, that table may have been altered so that the BIOS is now directed to boot from the D:\ partition. There are ways of getting in there to edit that data, but I don't know how off-hand right now, and any inadvertent mistakes could just compound the problem, so I would just suggest resetting the CMOS so that the current boot table is wiped - the BIOS will just use the default that was hard-coded into the BIOS when it cannot find the table it saved the last time it booted, and that default table should specify the C:\ partition as the first boot device.

You should be able to reset the CMOS by taking the little battery out of the holder on the motherboard, waiting 10 minutes, and then putting it back in, but check with your user manual first and, if need be, by googling, because some OEMs have quirky little twists to the CMOS reset procedure.

 

Sorry, I didn't see this when I was writing my last novelette - the simplest way to fix this is to get into the disk manager in the administrative tools part of the control panel (at least, that's where it is on XP; if _Vista put it elsewhere, hopefully either you know or someone will stop by quickly and correct me ), and then use the disk manager to change the assigned disk drive letters so that the partition on which media center resides is relabeled as the D:\ drive and the partition on which the OS resides is relabeled as the C:\ partition.

 

Thanks for the help but I got it fixed!

I can't believe I actually called Dell Support for help, all I got was a "run this diag..blah blah blah" and "your only hope is to reinstall your OS and lose all your data."

I ended up buying a copy of Vista on campus today (Ultimate for $15 ) and installing it over my previous OS and now it works perfectly.

I got rid of Media Direct this time just in case...now to find a way to put Windows Media Center on there...