Catch 22 laptop Vista boot failure, help needed!

[7Enigma]

Hello everyone,

I'm not a computer tech but know my way around most issues and so do some support for friends/family. I've had a difficult time with my latest problem system in a friends Vista laptop. Somehow the boot has become corrupted and it fails to do anything past posting. Immediately it gives the error so there is no way to get into safe/debug mode.

When I opened the access panel on the bottom of the laptop the HD has a "remove this and void the warrenty" sticker on it, and I think the laptop is still under warranty so that is out (I had planned on just popping the drive into my desktop system and trying to fix it from there).

Compounding the issue is the laptop has a broken (read: basically ripped out) dvd drive so I can't use the Windows CD to attempt to fix the boot. I thought I finally had the issue resolved when I made a USB DOS boot drive, but all it does is throw me to DOS with no way to "see" the (I'm assuming) NTFS formatted hard-drive to attempt some command-line fixes.

Basically I've run out of my own options minus possibly getting a hold of a Vista dvd (I think this laptop is 32-bit and my Vista dvd is 64-bit) and trying to boot from that on a USB drive (if that's even possible, but I do have an 8-gig USB). The laptop has an E-sata port but I don't have a spare SATA dvd drive (just the one on my main desktop system that I would prefer not having to remove).

So any thoughts? Can anyone comment whether the 64-bit boot would be able to repair the 32-bit OS install? I really don't want to go through the trouble of trying to make a Vista USB drive if it's not compatible with the 32-bit OS on the laptop.

Thanks in advance for anyone's help. This one is just a catch 22 all the way!

 

[Raduque]

I wouldn't try to repair a 32bit OS with a 64bit disc. It would seriously mess up the system files, if the disc even let you do the repair.

What brand of laptop is this that has a warranty void sticker on the HDD?

Edit: Does the laptop have the ability to boot from a restore partition? You should be able to access the PE to run diagnostic tools.

Oh and you didn't mention the actual error message.

 

[C1]

If you know what needs to be changed, then download NTFS DOS Free. There are various versions of it and it should be relatively easy to find something suitable via Google Search.

 

[C1]

If you know what needs to be changed, then download NTFS DOS Free. There are various versions of it and it should be relatively easy to find something suitable via Google Search.

 

[7Enigma]

I wouldn't try to repair a 32bit OS with a 64bit disc. It would seriously mess up the system files, if the disc even let you do the repair.

What brand of laptop is this that has a warranty void sticker on the HDD?

Edit: Does the laptop have the ability to boot from a restore partition? You should be able to access the PE to run diagnostic tools.

Oh and you didn't mention the actual error message.

Glad I didn't try the 64-bit disk then. I'll have to see if the owner has a disk but seems like more and more often there's a hidden partition on the HD that has a restore OS (no help there since I can't see anything as the error pops up at the end of POST).

The laptop is a Toshiba

Error is winload.exe at boot. Status: 0xc000000f

Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.

Thanks again to both of you for your help. I'll give NTFS dos a shot and see if that allows me to see the drive and possibly do some repairs from the DOS prompt (though I deleted the bookmark of the one article I had read).