Boot Partition Corrupted -- Repair How????

My HP Media Center PC when purchased ~2 years ago came with Microsoft XP
Media Center. I subsequently upgraded to Vista (another horror story). The
other day when I tried to cold boot, I got an error message that the boot
partition at some file location was corrupted and I needed to run the OEM
installion disk to repair. Since the original OS was factory-installed XP
Medi Center, I do not have OEM XP Media Center disks. Since I upgraded to
Vista, I do not have the full Vista OS disk either (I only have the upgrade
version which I purchased recently). I have tried everything I can think of
using the repair disks I created shortly after purchasing the HP Media Center
PC. UNFORTUNATELY, these repair disks were created using XP Medai Center and
Vista is now the operating system. So they do not help and likely only made
things worse. Now running the repair disks only tell me to reformat the
entire C:\ hard drive. Unfortunately, even if I do that, I do not have OEM
XP Media Center disks to use to re-install XP and I am not anxious to spend
~$400 to get the full Vista operating system disk. Anyone have any
suggestions on what to do to repair the boot sequence? I even was able to
reinstall the boot program for XP Media Center but since Vista is now the OS
that did not work either (and probably only made things worse). Anyone
please suggest something! I need to be able to use this PC. Thanks.

If you have upgraded to Vista fro XP Media Center, you would have a
DVD that you used for that upgrade. You should be able to insert it,
boot from it, and run a repair.

On Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:25:00 -0800, JTW

--

Barb Bowman
MS-MVP
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/meetexperts/bowman.mspx
http://blogs.digitalmediaphile.com/barb/
http://digitalmediaphile.wordpress.com

I tried this early on in my attempts to repair the boot partition corrupted
file. The Vista Upgrade disk does NOT boot up the PC. I stiill get the same
corrupted boot file error notification telling me to put in the original
installion disk (which was XP and I do not have that disk) and click on
repair. I am not given an opportunity to even get into the directory of the
Vista Upgrade disk, let alone boot from it or do anything else. Thanks for
the reply. Any other ideas??

"Barb Bowman" wrote:

I'm kind of winging it here.

It may be possible to create a bootable DVD or CD from your Vista
upgrade disk using tools available on the Internet. I have done such a
thing a long time ago with earlier Windows, but:

1. I don't remember how to do it or where to get the info and tools.

2. I don't know if such tools exist for Vista.

Unless someone who remembers pipes up, you'll have to Google for more
info on all of this.

Sorry - I wish I could be more helpful...

On 11/22/2008, JTW posted this:



--
Gene E. Bloch (Gino) letters617blochg3251
(replace the numbers by "at" and "dotcom")

have you gone into the BIOS (pressing some F key or other key as
displayed when you first boot) and changed the boot order so that
the CD\DVD is first on the list. Some computers have an additional F
key you can press to temporarily specify a boot device.

otherwise, as Gene said..

On Sat, 22 Nov 2008 16:58:00 -0800, JTW

Center
and
--

Barb Bowman
MS-MVP
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/meetexperts/bowman.mspx
http://blogs.digitalmediaphile.com/barb/
http://digitalmediaphile.wordpress.com