Vista can't boot without DVD

Do you have multiple hard drives?

I had a problem similar to you before and I found that when I changed the
boot order in the BIOS the problem went away.
The problem happened because when I installed Vista I had set my computer to
boot first of my DVD drive and the next choice was my second hard drive.
Once I had installed Vista I changed the boot order to my main hard drive
thus meaning when vista started up the bootloader was looking for the boot
manager in a place it did not exist.

NIK

"Boris Buchanan" <bb@bb.net> wrote in message
news:emiyElDMHHA.4888@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...

> Just installed Vista on the second of two SATA RAID arrays on a new PC
> with the nVidia nForce4 for AMD chipset. The first array had XP SP2 (an
> old IDE drive with another XP installation was also present). The install
> process finished without problem, but after installation, the system only
> boots with the Vista distribution DVD in the drive. The system is not
> booting from the DVD. It is booting from the array, but appears to
> require information on the DVD to succeed. When the DVD is not present,
> booting halts with the message: "BOOTMGR is missing. Press CTL+ALT+DEL."
>
> I tried using bootsect to reinstall the bootloader, but this helped none.
> I also tried booting from the distribution DVD and running the repair
> installation tool, but the tool found no problems with the installation.
>
> I also observed the installation has no \boot directory. I believe I have
> read that Vista installations always have \boot directories.
>
> How can I repair my installation so that it boots without the DVD present?
>
> Boris
>
>

this is the answer, I had this issue, the SATA drive that used to have XP on
it was listed before the drive that has vista on it (in boot order). since I
had formatted the old XP drive, there was no bootmgr on it. once I switched
the order to put the vista drive first in priority and the blank drive
second, it booted fine without the vista disk.

thanks!

"nicholas hall" wrote:

> Do you have multiple hard drives?
>
> I had a problem similar to you before and I found that when I changed the
> boot order in the BIOS the problem went away.
> The problem happened because when I installed Vista I had set my computer to
> boot first of my DVD drive and the next choice was my second hard drive.
> Once I had installed Vista I changed the boot order to my main hard drive
> thus meaning when vista started up the bootloader was looking for the boot
> manager in a place it did not exist.
>
> NIK
>

Run the Disk Management snap-in in Vista to identify the hard drive
that contains the System partition. The BIOS has to be set to boot
that hard drive. For Phoenix/Award BIOS, move that drive to the top of
the drive list in the Hard Disk Boot Priority setting. For AMI BIOS,
the setting is Hard Disk Drives.

On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 14:48:29 -0500, "Boris Buchanan" <bb@bb.net> wrote:

>Just installed Vista on the second of two SATA RAID arrays on a new PC with
>the nVidia nForce4 for AMD chipset. The first array had XP SP2 (an old IDE
>drive with another XP installation was also present). The install process
>finished without problem, but after installation, the system only boots with
>the Vista distribution DVD in the drive. The system is not booting from the
>DVD. It is booting from the array, but appears to require information on
>the DVD to succeed. When the DVD is not present, booting halts with the
>message: "BOOTMGR is missing. Press CTL+ALT+DEL."
>
>I tried using bootsect to reinstall the bootloader, but this helped none. I
>also tried booting from the distribution DVD and running the repair
>installation tool, but the tool found no problems with the installation.
>
>I also observed the installation has no \boot directory. I believe I have
>read that Vista installations always have \boot directories.
>
>How can I repair my installation so that it boots without the DVD present?
>
>Boris
>

And the partition with the boot manager has to be the active partition.

"andy" <bogusaddress@bogusaddress.123> wrote in message
news:9r1rp2p6k4f8r576s8sf6hq0lvhtupvp0a@4ax.com...

> Run the Disk Management snap-in in Vista to identify the hard drive
> that contains the System partition. The BIOS has to be set to boot
> that hard drive. For Phoenix/Award BIOS, move that drive to the top of
> the drive list in the Hard Disk Boot Priority setting. For AMI BIOS,
> the setting is Hard Disk Drives.
>
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 14:48:29 -0500, "Boris Buchanan" <bb@bb.net> wrote:
>

>>Just installed Vista on the second of two SATA RAID arrays on a new PC
>>with
>>the nVidia nForce4 for AMD chipset. The first array had XP SP2 (an old
>>IDE
>>drive with another XP installation was also present). The install process
>>finished without problem, but after installation, the system only boots
>>with
>>the Vista distribution DVD in the drive. The system is not booting from
>>the
>>DVD. It is booting from the array, but appears to require information on
>>the DVD to succeed. When the DVD is not present, booting halts with the
>>message: "BOOTMGR is missing. Press CTL+ALT+DEL."
>>
>>I tried using bootsect to reinstall the bootloader, but this helped none.
>>I
>>also tried booting from the distribution DVD and running the repair
>>installation tool, but the tool found no problems with the installation.
>>
>>I also observed the installation has no \boot directory. I believe I have
>>read that Vista installations always have \boot directories.
>>
>>How can I repair my installation so that it boots without the DVD present?
>>
>>Boris
>>

>

I had the exact type of problem with Vista not booting from a SATA HD.
Finally cured it with a BIOS update from Gigabyte for the MB. This has
been the only problem I have had with 3 different installs.

On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 14:48:29 -0500, "Boris Buchanan" <bb@bb.net> wrote:

>Just installed Vista on the second of two SATA RAID arrays on a new PC with
>the nVidia nForce4 for AMD chipset. The first array had XP SP2 (an old IDE
>drive with another XP installation was also present). The install process
>finished without problem, but after installation, the system only boots with
>the Vista distribution DVD in the drive. The system is not booting fromthe
>DVD. It is booting from the array, but appears to require information on
>the DVD to succeed. When the DVD is not present, booting halts with the
>message: "BOOTMGR is missing. Press CTL+ALT+DEL."
>
>I tried using bootsect to reinstall the bootloader, but this helped none. I
>also tried booting from the distribution DVD and running the repair
>installation tool, but the tool found no problems with the installation.
>
>I also observed the installation has no \boot directory. I believe I have
>read that Vista installations always have \boot directories.
>
>How can I repair my installation so that it boots without the DVD present?
>
>Boris
>

I am having the same problem

I recently installed vista ultimate x64 by booting from the disc using the f11 boot menu and formatting my hard-drive with winxp installation to have a clean vista install. After installation, i have a problem where vista will not boot unless the bios is set to boot from cd/dvd drive and the disc must be in the drive; otherwise i get the message "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter". If I then put the disc in and press enter, it still will not boot; so the disc must be in the drive when the PC starts/restarts and the bios set to boot from cd/dvd drive.
The drive I have installed vista onto is a 80gb SATA; I tried booting into vista with all other devices disconnected so only the hard-drive was connected on its own, but this still didnt work.

Having a look around I havent found a solution yet but someone managed to fix there problem (was a different mobo tho) by flashing their bios to the latest version. I was running version 1.9 and updated to 1.D; though this hasnt fixed the problem and instead the booting up of the PC seems to be slower as it takes longer for IDE detection to come up. I flashed the bios down a step to 1.C to see if this speeded things back up but it still has a slower boot and the IDE detection doesnt come up as quick as on 1.9. Is this common?

I can live with the slower IDE detection but I would like to fix the problem with booting vista via the dvd; anyone have any suggestions?
Also I have noticed that the SATA drives are displayed under Device Manager as ATA devices within Vista; I havent been able to install any nforce4 drivers which comply with vista x64 so the drivers installed are from vista installation.

Any help is much appreciated.

Mark


PC Spec:

- MSI K8N Neo4 (PCB1.0 MS-7125, Bios 1.C)
- AMD64 3200+ (Skt939)
- Coolermaster Hyper48
- 2x 512Mb Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level 1 CL2, 2-3-2
- 1x PIONEER DVR-111L DVD, 1x BENQ DW1620 DVD
- Sapphire Radeon 256MB x800 xt
- Auzentech X-Mystique 7.1 HDA Sound Card
- Tagan 420W PSU
- Hard Drives: 1x 80GB SATA Seagate ST380817AS (OS), 1x 320GB SATA-2 Western Digital WD3200YS, 1x 500GB SATA-2 Samsung HD501LJ, 1x 160GB ATA Hitachi 7K250, 1x 160GB ATA Samsung SP1604N

EggHeadCafe.com - .NET Developer Portal of Choice
http://www.eggheadcafe.com

turns out that if youve got PATA (IDE) drives connected vista will install the Master Boot Record (MBR) onto Device 0; this being your primary IDE hard drive. Ive managed to fix it by disconnecting all hard-drives other than the one im installing to before installing vista.
I imagine you can just disconnect the PATA drives rather than all drives.

Hope this helps.

EggHeadCafe.com - .NET Developer Portal of Choice
http://www.eggheadcafe.com

I had this problem back with W2K when I had one EIDE drive and several
scsi drives and wanted the OS on the faster safer scsi ......