Technical > Computer Hardware Help > [hard drive] Windows 8 broke the MBR on a different drive

[hard drive] Windows 8 broke the MBR on a different drive

If it was a standard partition of Vista and no recovery partitions or any other partitions you can worth with a recovery CD

Issue:
bootrec /fixboot and bootrec /fixmbr

If there is any more than 1 partition on that HDD it will not work though. Otherwise you will have to do repair install.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke

reply to Nick
It wasn't a standard partition, it was actually a Dell drive with their utility and recovery partitions. Because of that I also didn't get a Installation/Recovery DVD.

I finally got my computer configured the way I want with Windows 8 and Windows Vista after using EasyBCD.

As I figured, Win8 Install saw my Vista drive and decided to modify the MBR of the Vista drive. I unplugged the Win8 drive and was able to delete the entry for Win8 using EasyBCD. After I got Vista working, I re-ran the Win8 setup and had it fix the non-bootable Win8 drive (after unplugging the Vista drive)

Got everything working the way I want finally.
--
-Stupidity, like hydrogen, is one of the basic building blocks of the Universe.
-Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Misc

reply to Nick
Glad to hear that it's finally fixed!

I guess we would appreciate some bit of elaboration on what exactly W8 entry was deleted with EasyBCD. I'm sure people will got to this trouble in future and will need help...

Thanks in advance.
--
Keep it simple, it'll become complex by itself...

Interesting it is only an entry, I have read here somewhere Win 8 affects previous installs and it is a known issue.

Clear documentation will help, both here and at Microsoft. Will look into the second part later to see if there is a KB article or something.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke

reply to Nick
It was quite obvious once launching EasyBCD that there were 2 entries...
One for Vista
One for Win8
The entry for Win8 is fairly obvious

I also toggled the 30 second menu selection to 0.

I'm sure there was a partition issue too but haven't found the discussion that was here somewhere relative to it.

reply to Nick
I used 2 separate drives, perhaps that's why I didn't have a partitioning issue.