Vista failed to boot

There was no "repair" option that I can recall.

Acronis works perfectly. The version of Acronis I ran was the one I installed and hadn't updated.

load the install disk at the boot screen and choose repair instead of install.

I believe Acronis is in need of a serious up dating. For me Acronis caused two, two hard drive crashes in a week. One because the cloning software created two hard drives with the same drive letter and the second because the disks had errors on them. I'll try Norton Ghost before I use that again.

That's a better English description than most others Event Viewer gives.

Even if the system unexpectedly loses power during a sleep transition, more common on laptops, it should automatically recover from the last known good instead of the newly half-saved state. Keep your TrueImage backups up-to-date, but if it happens again note that you can recover your latest files before reverting to the backup image...no need to lose a week's worth of work in most cases, even with an unbootable system.

John

Are you saying that if I had used my computer recovery disks I would have seen a choice to repair instead of reinstall?

I finally found the answer in the bowels of Windows Help and Support:

"How do I use Startup Repair?
Startup Repair is located on the System Recovery Options menu, which is on the Windows installation disc. Startup Repair might also be installed on your hard disk if your computer has preinstalled recovery options. Startup Repair might prompt you to make choices as it tries to fix the problem, and if necessary, it might restart your computer as it makes repairs.
If you have a Windows installation disc:
1. Insert the installation disc. If your computer is not configured to start from a CD or DVD, check the information that came with your computer.
2. Restart your computer.
Click the Start button , click the arrow next to the Lock button , and then click Restart.
3. Choose your language settings, and then click Next.
4. Click Repair your computer.
5. Select the operating system you want to repair, and then click Next.
6. On the System Recovery Options menu, click Startup Repair."

HP, Dell, and others customize theirs, often removing the recovery features provided by Microsoft in favor of their own. HP, for instance, used to offer two options: Destructive Recovery and Non-Destructive Recovery. The former would return the computer to factory condition while the later would preserve most installed programs and settings as well as files located in the Documents/Music/Videos folders.

A newer revision of their system lets you backup not just the OS but installed programs and personal files as well when you create a recovery disc, much like Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage. Then, when it comes time to recover, you can do a partial recovery if you can boot into Windows or a full recovery otherwise. It's nice to be able to backup all files now, but it means you lose the ability to repair a corrupted install and not lose saved files on the hard drive which were not included in the recovery discs.

Now to figure out exactly which models contain which system...

John

How does loading a second OS on a Hard drive help. In certain situations I've heard this will help recover a system. The problem I see with it is you'll create another drive choice at start up. I already have two. Multiple drives can get confusing at times and the drive letters switch around at times this adds to the confusion. With two drives I'd end up with four.