Vista won't boot without vista disk!

I just installed vista on my new computer i've assembled. Right now i have two 250gb sata drives in RAID 0 w/ vista installed on it, and a 250gb pata for storage. i've searched around, but didn't find a clear way to fix it.. i think its a problem with the MBR, but i have no idea how to access it and what to do with it??

Little more info please. What have you tried so far? What's the build?

Have you tried using the "repair" option on the disc? In BIOS, are your Boot Devices set properly?

Seems like I've heard of this problem before. Try searching the threads.

sorry.. heres the info:

AMD athlon64 5600+ x2
ECS 6100sm-m motherboard
Visiontek x1300 pcie
two seagate 250gb (prep record) in a stripe raid
1 WD 250gb PATA & a dvd burner
2gb of PC5300 memory

i've tried reinstalling, got the same results.
i've tried to set the boot to hard drives only and it still fails.
i searched the forums and found nothing, on the net i found some articles, but they were different a little and some where complicated (editing the mbr ) does any know how to do that??

//edit:
tried to repair w/ vista disk, it gave me an error saying that my operating system isn't compatible, and to use another repair disk..

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392/

You can use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) to troubleshoot and repair the following items in Windows Vista:

• A master boot record (MBR)
• A boot sector
• A Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store

Click to expand...

... or try VistaBootPro to repair / reinstall the Vista bootloader:

http://www.vistabootpro.org/

... under System Bootloader Maintenance.

i tried the vistabootpro and applied the changes trying all drives, then just that specific drive that its installed on.. didn't work
i can' t seem to get into windows RE to try out that other thing; it gives me an error saying i don't have vista installed.. :-S

please guys, help me out..
i was fortunate enough to get all my other stuff working on vista, get it working faster than xp, and w/o any bsod or freezing, its just this annoying problem..
*bump*

I'm going to shotgun a few suggestions because of some weird quirks that I had with Vista, but forgive me if this is obvious to ya. I'm just feeling your pain.

I had horrible problems getting Vista to load with my TV card installed on the board. It just wouldnt' work. I removed the card, installed Vista, and it worked fine. Try removing unneccesary cards from the board and reload Vista.

Try deleting your RAID set, then check the jumper settings on HD's, wiring, etc. then go through the process of setting up the RAID again in the BIOS. I had bizarre issues with Asus's EZ RAID_0. (It was not EZ.) At one point, I thought I had the RAID set up properly, but a look in the control panel showed me I had not.

My Vista computer occasionally goes into 'undead' mode. Won't even post without the vista disk. The only way I could get it to post from the HD's was to power down the PSU, wait 30 seconds, then power it back up again. Flashing the BIOS helped, but didn't solve the problem. I still occasionally have to power down my PSU to get it to post.

Make sure your BIOS settings agree with the Windows settings with regard to your boot priority, and boot device settings.

If none of that works, tempt someone smarter than you over to your house with beer and pizza. I've solved more problems this way...

Try booting with either the 250GB PATA HDD physically disconnected from the ribbon cable, or completely disabled in the BIOS (preferrably the controller the HDD is connected to, instead of just disabling the drive)

Thanks for all your help so far guys

Now that i think about it, i never checked the jumper on the raided hard drive.. not even sure if they were properly raided (not really experienced with it..) I'm gonna work on it when i get home today from school and see if it was all setup right.

Another thing i've noticed that even though i set my bios to boot from the hard drive alone, it will still boot up the cdrom. It only stopped doing that after i flashed the bios. I tried disconnecting the PATA hard drive and cdrom, but still got a boot failure.

I guess if all else fails, i'll try to install vista with nothing (but the dvdrom and sata raid) and see if that makes a difference, but i have a feeling that the raid is a problem, so i'll probably have to reinstall anyways...

Does anyone a way i can install the necessary boot records on my PATA hard drive and have it load vista on my raid? is that possible? yea, i know i'm lazy

Thanks again guys for all your help, i really appreciate it

Deleting your RAID set is data destructive, so keep that in mind. But from what you are saying, and with all the problems you've had, a clean slate might be called for.

Both Windows and BIOS has boot settings. And they have to agree with each other.

Good Luck. Let us know if anything worked.

I have a buddy who has this same problem but with XP

I have never taken the time to look at it, interesting problem though.

He isn't running any raid but he does have a sata disk so its a fairly similar setup.

If you figure it out, let me know so I can pass the info on to him.

IT WORKED!!!
all i did was reinstall it W/O the PATA hard drive..
when i was messing around, i noticed that the bootmgr files were installed on the PATA hard drive, i was like wtf? because there isn't an OS on it. so i tried to change that bootmgr file, and it ended up causing vista not to load.. period, w/ cd or without, so i ripped out that HD and tried everything u guys told me, deleting the array, putting it back, reformating, reinstalled vista and presto, it works. weird huh?

thanks for your help guys, i know a lot more about this stuff