I've been working on this a couple days. Been through a LOT of suggestions from old threads. The one that seems closest to my problem is this thread;
Windows Vista won't boot
That's one of those sites that wants you to join to see the answer. If you can't see the whole thread, paste 'Windows Vista won't boot experts-exchange' into Google and the Google link will open the entire thread.

I have 2 Windows systems on this Machine, they BOTH experienced the Exact same problem at the Exact same time. The 3rd system is Ubuntu 12.04 and it still works. It would appear something happened to the Disk, most likely from a recent Ubuntu Update. I'm to the point where using the Seagate Boot disk to clone the systems to another disk appears to be the only solution left. I really don't want to go through that seeing as how I'm using Ubuntu on that machine now. However, it would be nice to get my XP & Vista systems back. I have the Install disks for both systems. The Startup Repair from the Vista disk doesn't even see the half dozen Restore points I Know are in Vista. Both systems will not even boot into safe mode, you get to the progress bar then it restarts, or just as with the Link above, safe mode shows a few lines then restarts. Read the thread above, I've tried all that plus much more.

Anyone ever solve this type of problem?

I've been working on this a couple days. Been through a LOT of suggestions from old threads. The one that seems closest to my problem is this thread;
Windows Vista won't boot
That's one of those sites that wants you to join to see the answer. If you can't see the whole thread, paste 'Windows Vista won't boot experts-exchange' into Google and the Google link will open the entire thread.

I have 2 Windows systems on this Machine, they BOTH experienced the Exact same problem at the Exact same time. The 3rd system is Ubuntu 12.04 and it still works. It would appear something happened to the Disk, most likely from a recent Ubuntu Update. I'm to the point where using the Seagate Boot disk to clone the systems to another disk appears to be the only solution left. I really don't want to go through that seeing as how I'm using Ubuntu on that machine now. However, it would be nice to get my XP & Vista systems back. I have the Install disks for both systems. The Startup Repair from the Vista disk doesn't even see the half dozen Restore points I Know are in Vista. Both systems will not even boot into safe mode, you get to the progress bar then it restarts, or just as with the Link above, safe mode shows a few lines then restarts. Read the thread above, I've tried all that plus much more.

Anyone ever solve this type of problem?

if you experienced this problem after Tuesday's monthly update, I received an email from MS to remove an update, you might want to take a look at it. https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/ms14-045

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I don't buy computers, I build them!!

I wouldn't have thought a disk clone would work, since all it usually does, is copies the disk, faults and all, to a new disk. You may have to do a re-install of both Windows and possibly Ubuntu as well. Good luck with everything.

P.

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I've been working on this a couple days. Been through a LOT of suggestions from old threads. The one that seems closest to my problem is this thread;
Windows Vista won't boot
That's one of those sites that wants you to join to see the answer. If you can't see the whole thread, paste 'Windows Vista won't boot experts-exchange' into Google and the Google link will open the entire thread.

I have 2 Windows systems on this Machine, they BOTH experienced the Exact same problem at the Exact same time. The 3rd system is Ubuntu 12.04 and it still works. It would appear something happened to the Disk, most likely from a recent Ubuntu Update. I'm to the point where using the Seagate Boot disk to clone the systems to another disk appears to be the only solution left. I really don't want to go through that seeing as how I'm using Ubuntu on that machine now. However, it would be nice to get my XP & Vista systems back. I have the Install disks for both systems. The Startup Repair from the Vista disk doesn't even see the half dozen Restore points I Know are in Vista. Both systems will not even boot into safe mode, you get to the progress bar then it restarts, or just as with the Link above, safe mode shows a few lines then restarts. Read the thread above, I've tried all that plus much more.

Anyone ever solve this type of problem?

if you experienced this problem after Tuesday's monthly update, I received an email from MS to remove an update, you might want to take a look at it. https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/ms14-045

Interesting. However, I haven't run Vista since July 14th, XP was last run on July 31st. Since I was able to get everything going again, I'll checkout the Updates that have now appeared...

I wouldn't have thought a disk clone would work, since all it usually does, is copies the disk, faults and all, to a new disk. You may have to do a re-install of both Windows and possibly Ubuntu as well. Good luck with everything.

P.

Except the person in the Thread I linked to was able to fix his problem by copying the system to and from a different disk. Indicating there was something wrong with the Windows boot sectors on the disk.

Seems everything is working again. I had been concentrating on Vista seeing as how that system was the one with the Boot Manager containing both XP and Vista. I finally got around to the XP Install disk to try the fixboot and fixmbr from the XP disk. One of the things I had tried earlier was to try resetting the BIOS to defaults, that didn't work either...but, I had forgotten to set the SATA Emulation back to IDE. This board defaults to RAID. I discovered that as soon as I tried the XP repair. I ran the fixboot and fixmbr from the XP disk and that gave me back XP. Then I ran the Vista Startup Repair again from the Vista disk and that gave me XP and Vista. Finally I ran the Linux based Boot Repair Disk again, I had tried that a few times earlier, and that gave me XP, Vista, and Ubuntu. So, I'm still not sure what happened, other than something happened to the Windows Boot Sectors. Since it affected Windows and not Ubuntu, I'm going to have to call it a Windows thing.

Now...about that Windows update...

For what it's worth, I installed the last batch of updates on my 7 rig yesterday with no apparent ill effects....
So, I'm not going to uninstall anything at this point.

Glad you were able to recover.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

For what it's worth, I installed the last batch of updates on my 7 rig yesterday with no apparent ill effects....
So, I'm not going to uninstall anything at this point.

Glad you were able to recover.

+1 - It seems that the reboot problem is only affecting 8.1 machines. http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/windows-8-1-refuses-to-boot-after-tuesday-update.html. MS sent out an email late last night to remove an update https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/ms14-045.

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I don't buy computers, I build them!!

For what it's worth, I installed the last batch of updates on my 7 rig yesterday with no apparent ill effects....
So, I'm not going to uninstall anything at this point.

Glad you were able to recover.

+1 - It seems that the reboot problem is only affecting 8.1 machines. http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/windows-8-1-refuses-to-boot-after-tuesday-update.html. MS sent out an email late last night to remove an update https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/ms14-045.

Hmmm, I don't pay much attention to the Windows 8.1 machine, except when someone starts complaining about it not waking from sleep. It seems it's installed 22 Updates since Aug 8th. I haven't heard any complaints :-)

It did just install a new Defender Update and restarted OK, so, I guess all is well.

For what it's worth, I installed the last batch of updates on my 7 rig yesterday with no apparent ill effects....
So, I'm not going to uninstall anything at this point.

Glad you were able to recover.

+1 - It seems that the reboot problem is only affecting 8.1 machines. http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/windows-8-1-refuses-to-boot-after-tuesday-update.html. MS sent out an email late last night to remove an update https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/ms14-045.

Hmmm, I don't pay much attention to the Windows 8.1 machine, except when someone starts complaining about it not waking from sleep. It seems it's installed 22 Updates since Aug 8th. I haven't heard any complaints :-)

It did just install a new Defender Update and restarted OK, so, I guess all is well.

For some reason from what I was able to gather not all 8.1 machine were/are affected.

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I don't buy computers, I build them!!

Seems everything is working again. I had been concentrating on Vista seeing as how that system was the one with the Boot Manager containing both XP and Vista. I finally got around to the XP Install disk to try the fixboot and fixmbr from the XP disk. One of the things I had tried earlier was to try resetting the BIOS to defaults, that didn't work either...but, I had forgotten to set the SATA Emulation back to IDE. This board defaults to RAID. I discovered that as soon as I tried the XP repair. I ran the fixboot and fixmbr from the XP disk and that gave me back XP. Then I ran the Vista Startup Repair again from the Vista disk and that gave me XP and Vista. Finally I ran the Linux based Boot Repair Disk again, I had tried that a few times earlier, and that gave me XP, Vista, and Ubuntu. So, I'm still not sure what happened, other than something happened to the Windows Boot Sectors. Since it affected Windows and not Ubuntu, I'm going to have to call it a Windows thing.

Definitely a Windows issue. Since Vista, any machine that has XP in a multi boot, XP MUST be first.

Tbar when you have a multi boot system you must have it set up on separate drives you didn't say if that is what you have or weather you have just partition the drive

if you have done it the second way it works , but is pron to this type of problem the boot loaders are different for XP and (Vista / win 7) and should be on separate drives not shore about Ubuntu limited experinace me.

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Tbar when you have a multi boot system you must have it set up one separate drives (snipped)

Not true at all, Glenn.
I have had just a few dual boot rigs over the years. Granted, none involved Linux. Just different versions of Windows. And they were all on single HD installations. Just different partitions.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Mark every time i've done it i get troubble's after a while plus if the drive dies you you lose the lot.

Better these days to go VM works just as good and can run at the same time most I 3's + can run VM's

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Mark every time i've done it i get troubble's after a while plus if the drive dies you you lose the lot.

Better these days to go VM works just as good and can run at the same time most I 3's + can run VM's

All my rigs these days are single boot stand alone installations. Eight of them I interface with through a Hawking 8 port KVM, and the 9th is on it's own keyboard, mouse, and separate monitor.
Don't know a thing about VMs...so you got me there. LOL.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

All my rigs these days are single boot stand alone installations.

how do you back the whole thing up just in case something happened ?

You don't need to know much about VM's you just load one of many different one or all of them and create a new Vm hard drive and then you just load the op as you would a new machine . The simple way but your savy enouth to figure any probs but it's very easy

Java box
Vertual Machine

Microsoft have 1 too brain block
but easy

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All my rigs these days are single boot stand alone installations.

how do you back the whole thing up just in case something happened ?

Simple. I don't. The only one I back anything up on is my daily driver. Which reminds me...about time to do another backup.

The other 8 are all crunch-only rigs. And if something goes away, I start over.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Mark every time i've done it i get troubble's after a while plus if the drive dies you you lose the lot.

Better these days to go VM works just as good and can run at the same time most I 3's + can run VM's

Unless one is using a separate drive for VM's, drive dies & you still lose the lot.

Well if your smart you will store all your personal stuff in personal folders on a different drive Windows doesn't need super big drives to run . Loss Windows no prob lose your stuff big prob

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My laptop is a triple-boot with one 120gb drive. It works fine. You just have to plan it out before you start the installations.

I did four primary partitions: 100gb (win7), 4gb (xp), ~6.5gb (linux), 1gb (linux swap). Started with the XP install, then moved on to win7, and did linux last.

Linux replaced the MBR with GrUB, which only had two entries: Linux and win7. If you choose win7, then you get another boot loader to choose win7 or XP. I didn't like that, so I did some research and found out that you just have to throw NTLDR back onto the XP partition instead of on the win7 partition, and then go through an administrative command prompt to remove the XP entry from the windows boot menu.

Go back into Linux and edit the GrUB menu to add the XP entry in there with 'chainload +1' on the XP partition.. and successful triple-boot, all from GrUB.

And of course, I did something really smart after I got it all working: made back-up copies of the MBR and the first sector of all of the partitions and put them on a flash drive. I think it has only happened once, but I got an update for win7 that wiped out the MBR for the whole disk and it just booted straight into win7 without any kind of menu to choose from. Put a liveboot Linux CD in, plugged my flash drive in, and copied my backup MBR back to the drive and problem was fixed.


For reference on making back-up copies of the MBR from within Linux:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/flash_drive/sda_MBR.backup bs=512 count=1

if= is 'input file', of= is 'output file', bs= is 'block size', count= is.. well how many blocks to copy. Your drive designation may differ. For mine, /dev/sda is the first SCSI/SATA disk. Individual partitions are sda1/2/3/4.

Using the back-up is basically the same.. though I recommend making a backup of the current one just in case it doesn't go right, but you basically just swap the values of if= and of=. Find out, also, what your sector sizes are. Most SSDs these days are 4096 instead of 512.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)