help with laptop and 2 vistas

carolwat

Hi

I have come to visit family and as usual I have to resolve all their computer issues whilst im here. I am trying to sort a laptop that developed a problem which someone has tried to fix and the laptop now has 2 copies of vista on it I think. During start up it tells me to choose a program to start and there is a list of 2 items, both of which are identical and are windows vista.

One will not start up as it asks for a key and when i enter the one on the bottom of the laptop it says it is wrong. The other one starts up but asks for the product key everytime.

Im not great with vista but I can follow instructions so if anyone can help me get rid of this option on startup and get this laptop working properly again i would appreciate it.

Thanks

Cat695

Download this http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 its called easyBCD....very simple to use

what has happened is that you now have two master boot records (known as MBR) all you need to do is delete one of them.....which is where this program comes in.....install it

when it opens it will show you display mode....down the left hand side is some buttons click on add/remove entries

you will see two entries in the top white box...delete the bottom one (you have to click on it once first then you can select delete)

now click back on view entries and it will show only one MBR

once you've done that click on the button (left hand side) manage bootloader...on the top of that page make sure reinstall the vista bootloader is selected and click on write MBR.....this will just make sure the MBR is ok

then restart vista and everything will be fine

let me know if it worked (sorted mine out without any hassle)

carolwat

Thank you Thank you Thank you

It worked.

Thank you so much.

Cat695

you are most welcome

Conor_3

Err, just to put the advice slightly right.

You don't have two copies of the MBR - its impossible to, merely two entries for Vista in the boot configuration file which is why the menu pops up. You didn't need to use BCDedit but merely go into Control Panel, System, Advanced Settings, Advanced and click on the Startup and Recovery Settings button then select the default OS and untick the box below that.