With ultimate UBCD I finally made Vista vanish forever.
(deleted all partitions and created a new active one)

But got a new problem.

I ran the old ACER XP restore cds for the acer laptop.
Everything appears to have gone ok with the install....

Except the final stage after all the files have been copied ext.
The system is on its first independant boot (the one that completes the setup configuration)

BOOM
I get this error.
Autochck program not found - Skipping autocheck

And the system just reboots.... (with the same error)
reboots....
reboots...
reboots..

If it's rebooting after displaying that message, your system partition is marked as "hidden NTFS". You can download a program called ptedit from PowerQuest for free. Boot to a DOS disk, run PTEdit, and change the "partition type" from hex 0x17 to hex 0x07.

If the message "autochk not found" is displayed but your computer otherwise completes the boot process normally, you need to remove Windows XP HotFix KB824105 in "add/remove programs" using safe mode.

You see, the problem is not that your computer can't find autochk.exe -- the problem is that it cannot find the system partition itself and therefore cannot traverse the directory path to find autochk.exe. This is exactly what happens if the partition is flagged as invisible (ie: "hidden NTFS").

I'm on the powerquest partition editor now.
There is nothing there marked to set the hex number.
In fact this is what I have

Across my editor I have this:


......... Starting .................................................. ..................Ending................................. Sectors
..........type......... Boot............ Cyl....... Head ........Sector........ Cyl........ Head....... Sector....... Before..... Sectors
1 . .... 27............80................0..........1...... ........ 1..............512....... 254.......... 63............ 63.......... 156296322

Under Set type

00 Freespace
01 Fat12
04 Fat16 (<32 MB)
05 Extended
06 Fat16B (>=32 MB)
07 Installable File System (NTFS, HPFS)
0A IBM Boot Manager
0B FAT32
0C Fat32X
0E Fat16X
0F Extended X
11 Hidden Fat12
14 Hidden Fat16(<32 MB)
16 Hidden Fat16B(>=32 MB)
17 Hidden IFS (NTFS, HPFS)
1B Hidden Fat32
1C Hidden Fat32X
1E Hidden Fat16X
3C PowerQuest Recoverable Partition
64 Novell Netware 268
65 Novell Netware (3.11 and 4.1)
66 Novell Netware 386
81 Linux/Minix v1.4b+
82 Linux Swap partition
83 Linux native file system (ext2fs)
84 OS/2 hiing type 04h Partition
86 NT fat volume set
87 NT IFS volume set
93 Hidden LInux native file system (ext2fs)
C6 Disabled NT Fat volume set
C7 Disabled NT IFS volume set

Now under boot record what am I dealing with here ?

I've got 28 sectors labled and here are the ones labled Hex

1) Jump -EB5890
7) Reserved - 0000 -
8) Reserved -0000-
9) Media Descriptor - F8-
16) Extended Flag -0000-
17) FS Version -000-
21) Reserved -Bunch of zeros -
22) Drive ID - 80 -
23) Reserved for NT -00-
24) Extended Boot Siq -29-
25)Seriel Number -262916F0-
28)Signature -AA55-

Update: I've changed the type from 27 to 07 for NTFS
and I've changed it to 0B for fat.

Nothing gets changed and it keeps doing the reboot.

Hopelessly lost

I think the problem is I'm running some sort of type " 27 "
And from everything I can find...
It doesn't even appear to exist.

Final update

I made it work....
The partition "Type" is 27 in under the newest release of Vista.
None of the partion systems, etc recognize it. I changed that thing
under Ptedit and several others to 07 for NTFS and 0B for Fat32.

I ran MBR fix a dozen times...

NOTHING WORKED.

Finally with nothing left to use I just played around and installed anything and everything.
Including a boot manager.....

It started to work!

After UNinstalling the boot manager it continued to work

End result is this...
Microsoft is really playing with the MBR in such a way I think it's ilegal.

When you buy a car...
You have the right to change, remove, etc. Any single part or piece of it.

If you purchased a new Ford Mustang and decided to remove the engine and install
a Toyota 1.8....That is certainly your right !!! And Ford does NOT have the right
to send a team of mechanics to your home to reinstall their engine.