error booting into windows

i dont know how it happened but as soon as i restarted my pc all i see is this nasty bootup error...

error attempting to read boot config data

file: \boot\bcd
status: 0x000000F

:eek:

what does all this mean? what could i have done before restarting my pc to make this error come up instead of booting up normally?

i didnt have a windows installation disk that it asked me to put into the drive and it wouldnt let me do anything like go to system restore or do a startup repair. so i ended up having to reinstall the entire system with recovery disks instead of being able to fix the bootup mess from the start.

what couldve caused this error and is there a free download available somewhere that could help solve this problem, such as a windows boot or startup disk to work with vista 86x.

thanks

Greetz.

You could of inserted your windows installer cdr, boot from that and gone directly into the Recovery Console and logged in as Administrator, selected the relevant drive.

Then punch in "Fixmbr" & "Fixboot"

removed the install disc when it told you to, and restarted the machine.

I am inclined to suspect that maybe your boot loader may of died:(

There is no Recovery Console option in Vista, nor would those W2K/WinXP instructions work in any case, as the method of booting Vista/Win7 is utterly different.

You really do need a Vista DVD to run Startup Repair in cases such as this. It is where those Recovery Disks fall a long way short of having the real thing :( As to what caused it, that's impossible to guess, but it was probably nothing more than a bit getting flipped in one of the critical boot files (they are the hidden, protected files "bootmgr", "bootsect.bak" and everything in the "Boot" folder in root of the C: drive).