Windows won't boot with Error 0x0000225; A working solution

Well recently I partitioned my HDD to allow space for my Ubuntu 9.10 install. So to do this I did as I always did, I booted parted magic and used gParted to partition the drive. Everything went normal and it took about 2 hours to reduce my 400 gig debian install to 110 gigs. I then decided as I had it open, I'd increase the size of my windwos vista partition by 30 gigs, as it was running out of space. So I did the same as I'd always done and not too long later the partiton was increased.

And of course, when I reboot the machine, all my OSs work perfectly, except for windows, which gives the following error (well, along these lines anyway) ;

Windows has failed to boot, insert recovery disk etc...

File: \windows\system32\winload.exe

Status: 0x0000225

Info: Application missing or corrupt

So I poked around, I mounted windows on my linux box (very relieved to find the filesystem was intact) and found the file was indeed there. After a bit of google I found a few solutions that didn't work such as copying the winload.exe file from another directory. In the end, I decided that I'd simply do what the error message said, boot a recovery CD and hit repair. now I didn't like the sound of this, mainly because everytime I'd use a windows cd to recover windows OS, it either overwrote the system or destroyed my bootloader (or most annoyingly, installed the windows bootloader on other HDDs making it impossible to use GRUB as my bootloader). So I found a link to the torrent on neosmarts blog and burned the iso to a dvdrw. Learning from my mistakes, I backup everything up on a seperate HDD and unplugged all the other HDDs from my PC. I booted up the cd, 10 minutes later it fully boots. Nervously I press repair, it nicely tells my my problem, and if I'd like to repair.

I went for it, and amazingly, it took about 5 seconds and rebooted as normal. I was met by my lovely grub menu, and windows worked as though nothing ever happened. This came as a big shock to me, as I figured it would ATLEAST overwrite my bootloader.

Anyway, this post is simply meant as a reassurance to anyone who get this error, that microsoft won't completely mess your pc, and not to be afraid to use their recovery disk. The problem should never have occured in the 1st place, but fair play to microsoft for changing nothing, and making what seems to be a useful tool.

To sum it up:

1. Download and burn iso image which can be torrented here
2. Boot from cd and click repair

Everything should now work perfectly.