Windows Vista No Operating System?

I have 1 drive (80gb)

It's partitioned into 4 drives:

XP
Vista
Music
Pics

Well, as you may guess, I installed Vista to the vista partition. That was fine and dandy. However, my roommate (we share this computer) must have formatted XP (C:\ Drive) and he'll be gone all weekend. We were planning on doing that but not just yet.

So now when I turn on my computer, all I get is a message stating that there is no operating system.

I just want the darn thing to boot to Vista - plain and simple.

What do I need to do to get that to happen?

Also, when we created the partitions a month ago and installed a fresh copy of XP he formatted the drives to NTFS, I believe.

Thanks for your help!

 

If you can boot off a CD with FDISK. Run the command fdisk /mbr. Also you might want to use a partition utility and set the Vista partition to active. That should fix the problem.

 

Don’t run fdisk/mbr as you will remove Vista’s Disk Signature number from the MBR.

If the XP partition has been formatted you will have lost the Vista boot files as they would have been inside the XP install. If the partition is still there and formatted as either FAT or NTFS then perhaps the Vista DVD auto recovery option can rebuild them. Boot from the DVD and at the second screen click System recovery options, then select keyboard layout and click next. If it can do the repair for you it will do it all automatically.

Of course with the Vista boot files back on the old XP partition you will loose them again if you reinstall XP.

 

got it to work.. thanks