Ok, so I had a hard disk (system) running Vista Business x64...

It was divided into 2 partitions.
- One 20GB System partition, and one 230GB EMPTY partition.
- That's how it was set up when i was given the pc.

The 20GB partition was about to burst with just the OS and a few apps, so i
decided it needed expanding. Deleted the 230GB, and expanded the 20GB up.
Have done nothing to it since.

Turned it on last night and i get the screen where it checks for CPU, HDDs
and RAM. All there. Then it shows me a black screen with the DOS cursor
(flashing underscore?), and hangs.

The same as it does sometimes when you leave a USB hard disk plugged in on
boot, but i have no peripherals plugged in to it besides keyboard, mouse and
monitor.

It occasionally displays "SYSTEM BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS
ENTER" (words to that effect) instead of the DOS cursor.

Inserting the Vista disk on repair did nothing; It's listing no Restore
Points and no Backups on that OS, even though i have some of both. Doing the
"Startup Repair" fixes nothing.

Now i have 2 questions:
- Have i done something really stupid here?
- Is there any way to recover or should i just re-install Vista?

Hi,

How is the drive seen in the system BIOS?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"MaliceEssence" wrote in message
...
Ok, so I had a hard disk (system) running Vista Business x64...

It was divided into 2 partitions.
- One 20GB System partition, and one 230GB EMPTY partition.
- That's how it was set up when i was given the pc.

The 20GB partition was about to burst with just the OS and a few apps, so
i
decided it needed expanding. Deleted the 230GB, and expanded the 20GB up.
Have done nothing to it since.

Turned it on last night and i get the screen where it checks for CPU, HDDs
and RAM. All there. Then it shows me a black screen with the DOS cursor
(flashing underscore?), and hangs.

The same as it does sometimes when you leave a USB hard disk plugged in on
boot, but i have no peripherals plugged in to it besides keyboard, mouse
and
monitor.

It occasionally displays "SYSTEM BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND
PRESS
ENTER" (words to that effect) instead of the DOS cursor.

Inserting the Vista disk on repair did nothing; It's listing no Restore
Points and no Backups on that OS, even though i have some of both. Doing
the
"Startup Repair" fixes nothing.

Now i have 2 questions:
- Have i done something really stupid here?
- Is there any way to recover or should i just re-install Vista?

Sounds to me like the hard drive died. Had identical symptoms on my parents
computer and was lucky enough to do a full backup when it first started, a
week later it was dead. Hope you have a backup.


"MaliceEssence" wrote in message
...
Ok, so I had a hard disk (system) running Vista Business x64...

It was divided into 2 partitions.
- One 20GB System partition, and one 230GB EMPTY partition.
- That's how it was set up when i was given the pc.

The 20GB partition was about to burst with just the OS and a few apps, so
i
decided it needed expanding. Deleted the 230GB, and expanded the 20GB up.
Have done nothing to it since.

Turned it on last night and i get the screen where it checks for CPU, HDDs
and RAM. All there. Then it shows me a black screen with the DOS cursor
(flashing underscore?), and hangs.

The same as it does sometimes when you leave a USB hard disk plugged in on
boot, but i have no peripherals plugged in to it besides keyboard, mouse
and
monitor.

It occasionally displays "SYSTEM BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND
PRESS
ENTER" (words to that effect) instead of the DOS cursor.

Inserting the Vista disk on repair did nothing; It's listing no Restore
Points and no Backups on that OS, even though i have some of both. Doing
the
"Startup Repair" fixes nothing.

Now i have 2 questions:
- Have i done something really stupid here?
- Is there any way to recover or should i just re-install Vista?