286 - When All Else Fails

... read the instructions.  A new version of that saying would be, "When all else fails, search Google."  As with both sayings, one should do the last phrase first; it would save a lot of headache.

This afternoon, my main home PC gave me the above error - BOOTMGR is missing.  It wouldn't boot past that point.  Frack!  Of course, I jumped to the worst conclusion, that my hard drive had just crashed.  Fortunately, my files are saved on a different hard drive, so I didn't have that panic.  After putting in a new hard drive and formatting it, I found that it wouldn't read my slaved drive.  So, I finally resorted to Google.  No luck on the slave issue.  Put the old hard drive back in thinking that maybe I could get it to reformat, but again got the error above.  FINALLY, my brain decided to work and I googled the error.  There was a solution.  I had to create a Windows Vista 64-bit Recovery Disc, but once that was done, the support thread I was reading stepped me right through the fix.

Yes, there are positives - I didn't lose any data or program installations because the fix only had to repair the boot process.  Also, I have multiple computers, so while my main one was sitting there hung up, I was using others to finally research and then create the needed disc.

Next time - will I try on my own or remember to Google first?  Dunno.  Just glad that I did this time.

TTFN!