Windows 10: Disk boot failure after removing old Vista partition

While installing Windows 10 on an old computer I met a puzzling problem I can’t seem to be able to solve. I’m currently unable to boot from any device kind of device or media, and have to ask for professional help.

The setup has an IDE DVD-drive (set to master), and two SATA hard drives: one for OS and one for data storage. Because the computer is quite old, I burned an actual installation DVD from image (Win 10 Pro x86 ver.1803). I tweaked the boot order in BIOS, and noticed there seemed to be some remnants of an old Vista installation on the disk I wanted to designate for personal data. Although it contained no OS files and only one partition, the computer was trying to boot from it. My guess is that the “data” disk was the original OS disk of the Fujitsu Siemens system sold with Vista. I set the DVD drive before the HDD’s in the boot order, but noticed that curiously Windows installation would not start unless the “data” disk was on top of the “Hard drives” list in the boot priorities. It also needed to be on top in order for the current Win 7 installation to start up, even though it was on another disk. I didn’t pay it too much attention at that point, since with this setting the computer booted from the installation disk just fine. I went on to delete all partitions from the OS drive (that contained a Win 7 installation), and successfully installed Win 10 in AHCI mode using the DVD.

Now running Win 10 I wanted to reformat the “data” disk for a clean slate. I could not do it in Windows, because it showed the disk as “system” (again with no OS files on it). I then restarted the installer from the DVD and used diskpart / clean to get rid of the unwanted old stuff. After doing this, the computer would not boot anymore, just show the dreaded DISK BOOT FAILURE –message.

BIOS shows both drives and the DVD-drive correctly regardless to which port they’re connected. I tried removing all other connected devices and individually tested booting with each drive being the only connected device. I also tried connecting each drive to another SATA port, using another SATA cable, and obviously also with just the IDE DVD connected. I also made a USB2 installation stick with Rufus and tried to boot from it. I also tried SATA controller in IDE mode, and defaulting all BIOS settings. To no avail – after the POST screen where the drives show up correctly, the DISK BOOT FAILURE pops up every time. The MoBo is an old one with no BIOS updates available since years: Asus M2R-FVM/VP/S. There’s no external GPU, just the built-in VGA chip. There are no connected PCI cards or anything else.

Now I don’t really know how to move forward, since the system is not willing to boot from anything at all. I would probably give up if I had not gotten Win 10 running smoothly and surprisingly fast with all drives functioning correctly for the short period of time before I cleaned the “data” disk. I would greatly appreciate any advice to help me solve the issue!

Best regards,


:)

 

Disk Boot Failure!

I'm On My Friends Old Computer!!!!!!!!1

NO MORE DISK BOOT FAILURE!!!!

 

Disk Boot Failure!

No, I wasn't able to boot either disk. Only: BOOT DISK FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.

 

Problem removing old harddisk because of vista boot manager

I have 3 harddisks, all seagate, 1 (the oldest) harddisk (160gb) is very noisy, I'd like to remove this drive but there is a problem.. The vista boot manager is on that drive, so it needs that drive to boot!

Sometime ago I was running xp pro x64 on this old harddrive, from within windows x64 I have installed Vista on a new sata2 drive so Vista itself is running fast on the new drive..But it still needs the old drive to boot!

Is there anyway I would be able to fix this problem:

removing the old disk and making the new sata2 disk the bootable disk on which Vista is installed.

Thanks in advance for any help*Smile