Windows Vista Can't start up?

Okay, so I had the "BOOTmgr is compressed" Error message, and after hours of browsing forums and trying many things, I got rid of it. I then returned the boot priority order to default, and when I try to boot, nothing happens.
It starts up, I get the ACER screen, and it's booting, but when it gets on it just has a flashing "_" In the top left corner, and nothing happens. I did system restore, but there was a point it went back to.
I can't get on, Install vista again, install xp, or ubuntu, either. (I was planning on downgrading anyhow, but when I reboot to install XP, I got the error message. I haven't ever heard of anyone else getting this when I looked through forums, and on vistaforums, no-one replied to my post. Any help, or suggestions. Questions can be answered when possible. Thanks.

 

Hi and welcome to the BBS,

Have you tried setting the boot priority back again? I expect you mean the boot priority in the BIOS/startup configuration settings. "Default" may include USB drives, network boot, IDE as opposed to SATA (which might be termed SCSI) before your HDD.

If you have any USB devices connected, disconnect them, it might be trying to boot to it/those.

My guess is that it is getting stuck trying to boot to the wrong drive/device.

If you want to go to Windows XP, I would expect that you need to delete the Vista partition, because XP doesn't partition the same way as Vista. Will you have Win XP drivers available? Acer might offer Linux drivers.

Matt
PS The "_" is a cursor. If you are searching for information, use the term "flashing cursor ".