A dual-boot between Windows XP and Windows Vista allows you to choose any of the operating systems while booting. You might encounter issues when you find your Windows Vista partition inaccesible and unreadable. If you fail to restore from your present backup in such cases, you are recommended to use a third-party Windows Partition Recovery software.

Consider the following scenario:


You use a dual-boot system using Windows Vista and XP. Windows Vista partition is formatted to NTFS file system.

You use Windows Vista built-in tool to shrink Windows XP partition that leaves some unallocated space on the hard drive

You then use a third-party partitioning utility to expand Windows Vista partition so that the unallocated space is covered

The process starts but doesn’t finish successfully and system is left in an unstable state

After this, when you restart the system to boot Windows Vista, you get the below error message displaying on screen and the you cannot boot into Windows Vista partition:

File: Windowssystem32winload.exe


Status: 0xc0000225


Info: the selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.

When you try to access the Windows partition by booting through Windows XP, it gives you another error:

“Disk is not formatted – do you want to format it?”

Cause

The use of third-party utility has corrupted the Windows Vista partition. This might occur if the utility fails to manage improved features included in NTFS file system used by Windows Vista.

Solution

You can apply following measures to solve the discussed problem:

Boot your system using Windows Vista installation disc to start Windows Recovery Environment and run ‘Startup Repair’

Try running the below commands:

bootrec /fixmbr


bootrec /fixboot


bootrec /RebuildBcd

If the error persists, partition the hard drive and reinstall Windows Vista. Use your backup to restore data from the lost partition.

At times, backup proves invalid to work completely. In such situations, you need to use a safe, comprehensive and powerful Partition Recovery utility to extract the lost information. Windows Data Recovery products are exclusively built products designed to scan the disk for lost, missing or damaged partitions.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a comprehensive Partition Recovery tool designed for Windows 7 RC1, Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000. This application is competent to recover lost partitions in all cases and provides advanced options. It is a safe utility that is compatible with FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 drives.