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Basically, I can't boot Vista either from my HDD or from the Vista DVD.
I tried out Ubuntu 6.06 on my Vista Home Premium laptop, and was halfway through installation when I decided to cancel it. When I restarted the laptop, Vista would not load - it would simply be stuck on the boot screen (with the
green loading bar).
When I press F12 and try to boot from the CD, it says that it is loading from the CD, then the screen changes to the boot screen (green loadingbar), then the screen goes blank.
I have left it for over 30 minutes in this blank-screen-state.
When I press F8 to try a repair, it goes to the boot screen, then goes black.
After each attempt I must hold the power button to turn the laptop off. When I turn it on again, and select Startup Repair as my startup option, it goes to the boot screen, then goes black.
I’ve also reset the BIOS to the default factory settings.
This laptop is new, and Vista was functioning perfectly before I tried out Ubuntu. I have read about restoring the MBR with a bootsect thing, but I don’t know how to access the Command Prompt before actually booting up.
First of all, theres an Ubuntu 7.1 right now, and 8 will be released soon. You are much better off using those.
Second of all, you made 2 very bad decisons that caused this:
1. Unless you installed Vista with a smaller partition prior to Ubuntu, having linux shrink Vista's partition so it will fit probably corrupted some info that Vista requires to run.
2. You canceled the setup. This is a problem because the Ubuntu install makes some last changes to the MBR when the setup is about 95% done.
What you also could have tried doing was entirely resetting BIOS. Opening up BIOS and telling it to load optimized settings doesn't fix every BIOS issue - You must open up the computer, use the clear CMOS jumper, AND take out the battery. Trust me, in some cases, that does make a difference.
Luckily you shouldn't have a permanent issue and BIOS shouoldn't have anything to do with it. I hope you didn't get rid of the Ubuntu CD cause thats you're only hope. I would suggest you get Ubuntu 7.10 first since that can read and write in NTFS. Anyways, start up Ubuntu. Save anything from Vista you can find, but I'm assuming its all gone anyway. Completely format the entire HDD, using NTFS if you can. Since Vista's boot method tends to have more power over other OSes, if you want Linux, I suggest you install that first - and obviously split up the partitions. Then, try Vista again.
I installed Ubuntu properly (using the old version) and mucked around with it for hours. Then I reformated the whole drive with Windows XP, because I got bored of Vista.