Windows Vista Forum / Vista Technical / Recovery & Backup

Vista login problem

ramkumargosling — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:53:34 GMT

hi I have vista german version . I have 145 gb data in my laptop. it has 160 GB harddisk. I get login screen and after giving username and password .I am getting blank screen for long time. then to shut down i have to use shift ctl del. Vista is not loading. Please help me to find the solution.

[SOLVED]Black screen of death - Nothing I've tried will fix this

kublid — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:49:35 GMT

Okay, first off, thank you all in advance for whoever can help solve this problem...

HP Laptop running Ultimate....

Everything was fine yesterday - attempted to load a .cue file with MagicISO and computer froze.. no biggie went to restart - got the loading shot (green night rider bar) and then black screen of death.

Restart - tried all safe modes but will not pass crcdisk.sys.....

Attemoted to start from dvd - finally got that working - Go in to repair mode - it finds Vista on by C: parition - scans for problems but can't fix them..

Try system restore - says there are none - which isn't true...

tried the command prompt and did bootrec /fixmbr and /fixboot

still no change.....

I even attempted to do a clean upgrade over the old one, but of course the upgrade option is grayed out...

ANYONE??????? I exhausted all I know how to do.. any help or suggestions would be great, I'll try anything!!

What if Startup Repair won't start!???

spark001uk — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:03:47 GMT

Lost power at logon screen earlier. I rebooted and it went to startup repair - but startup repair won't start!! Nor will safe mode, nor last known good config etc etc. Any ideas? I'm stuck! I dont have vista dvd's, i have a hp pavilion which has recovery disks. I tried those, but i get a pale blue screen with a pointer, and thats it! It just sits there. Im totally knackered as to what to do??

thanks

mark

Vista Complete PC Back Up

mikeody — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:05:31 GMT

Have been using the Vista Complete PC Back Up for a while.
I have always had three drives and Vista has always backed up Drives 1 and 2 to Drive 3.
I have just 'reorganised' my three hard drives and want the destination drive for the Complete Back Up to be changed from 3 to 2 however Vista keeps pointing me to Drive 3 and doesnt show Drive 2 as a destination option.
Does anyone know a way of fixing this ? Thanks.

Complete PC Backup feature in Vista

Jason — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 11:37:01 GMT

Back it all up: The Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista include the Complete PC Backup feature. It allows you to save an image backup of your system drive (and, optionally, other drives as well), which you can restore in a matter of minutes if you need to recover from a hardware failure or a software mess.

Data file backups: Windows Vista gives its new Backup utility star billing. For Home Basic and Home Premium editions, you can choose file-based backups based on file types and save your selection for reuse.

Back up on a schedule: The final step of the Backup program encourages you to create a schedule for automated backups. The first one you create is a full data backup; subsequent runs are incremental, backing up only files that are new or changed since the last backup.

There ya go. Backup your vista before it crashes!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?page_id=131&page=25

Vista Updates - somebody pls help !!

Maverick27 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:04:55 GMT

Hi,

I disabled the automatic 'Vista Update' a couple of days ago & decided yesterday to download & install the new Updates by simply clicking on the 'New Updates' icon on the toolbar.

When i restarted the laptop, it started the Repair Utility toolkit & took me back to a previous Restore point !!!

Can somebody advise !!

Do I un-install the Antivirus & take it form there ? There seems to be some sort of O/S conflict ! The situation is quite pathetic !!! I thought Vista was better than XP in terms of performance, stability & security ?!

I cant' even install any friggin' softwares !!

Mave

On start up, screen displays Media Player

brenin50 — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:33:51 GMT

My Son has an Acer Notebook, which model I am unsure of. On start up the screen displays Media Player and it has to be closed down before anything can be accessed. Also certain programmes, such as system Restore cannot be accessed and a error message appears saying something like 'Media player has encounterd a problem and has to close'. Can anyone throw some light on this although I suspect it is avirus of some sort.

We have also tried to re-format the machine from the CD drive, changed the settings so that it boots from the CD but it seems to bypass this and goes straight to the hard drive.

restoring lost pictures

JadePriest — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:05:38 GMT

Ok I have NO idea what I did but all my photos are gone. When I go to start menu then do a search for *.jpg all my photos are there but when I go to the folder it says it is in there is nothing there. I am assuming I deleted them by mistake. But the trash can is empty and I tried to do a restore point but I gues there are no restore points for me to go back too. Is there anything I can do or are they all lost..... thanx in advance.

missing partition

andrewbt1991 — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 18:40:27 GMT

the other day i wanted to dual boot my Acer laptop. it came with Vista home premium 32bit, and i wanted to use XP as well. but something went wrong with the install and XP didnt work. then the partition that had XP just disappeared. then my D:\ drive disappeared. i used my vista ult. x64 boot disk that i use for my desktop computer and merged the 2 missing partitions and then D:\ came back. then when i booted my laptop up this morning D:\ went missing again! any idea of what is happening?

I Cannot Retieve All My Previous Lost Files When I System Restore

OMGVinnyD — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:51:41 GMT

Hello, this is my first time in these forums. I am running a Windows Vista Home Premium which came on my HP Pavllion dv2000 laptop. I went into safe mode to look through some random files and I accidentally deleted my files that were in folders including some program folders that I have transfered from my home computer. These files were located in the Videos, Music, and Documents folder which were deleted. I had over 1700 songs of music for itunes for my iPod Touch and I had some important videos and data I was going to use for future random home and school projects. I did a system restore to a point, a day before of the incident, and I had all my programs back. I had retreived only two folders in my Documents folder and none in my Music and Videos. My iPod does have all my songs that I had pereviously and that includes my videos and pictures. I do not know how to get my music and my videos and pictures out of my iPod cause all programs I try to download to retreieve the items into my computer cost money to do a complete transfer and most programs do not help my iPod Touch. I cannot get my files back from a transfer with my old desktop computer because those fiels were deleted and I later found out that system restore was off so I cannot revert back to get those files.

Now, can someone please help me. I NEED not WANT but NEED those files back and I do not know how to. Can someone please help me and quick. Please and thank you.

Vista - Service Pack 1

enovativ — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 05:45:56 GMT

I have a Del Dimensions 4400 that I up to one week ago, had Vista Business installed on it. As soon as I tried to apply the Service Pack 1 update on it, and re-boot the machine, I get a :

Logon Process Initialization Failure error that says :

Interactive logon process initialization has failed. Please consult the event log for more dtails.

The problem is that no matter how I tried to get it....(i.e. safe mode for example) I get the same error, and can not get past this error.

I have tried to just boot off the DVD, and re-load windows...but for some reason the Dell Dimensions 4400 does not have an option in the BIOS to boot off the DVD....which I thought was how I installed Vista Business in the first place, but for some reason it is not working now. I even tried to find if there was a way to create a Vista Book Disk (floppy)...that did not work either....

Can anyone help me out on this one !

Enovativ

External Backup Disk Is Full

Lynnea — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:01:25 GMT

I have Windows Vista 64-bit. The fellow who built the computer set up scheduled backups on an external hard drive. The drive is nearly full. I don't see any information about what to do when the disk is full. Will older backups be deleted?

Lynnea

Recovering Vista files using Ubuntu

WAW8 — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:10:05 GMT

This guide is for those folks who have a Vista machine that will not boot into Vista anymore, and will not respond positively to either a Startup Repair or a Reinstallation. Both of these other activities are documented in this Forum and should be used before the activity detailed here.

In the event that your Vista machine simply will not boot, the only option available to you to get a working machine back is a complete installation of the OS from scratch. If you have a relatively “new” machine., with nothing worth saving, then you don't need this guide. But, if, as is the more typical case, you have a machine that you've used for months and don't want to lose all that work as a byproduct of a format and installation, this guide is for you.

[b][u]Some background ...[/u][/b]

Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux distribution. The current stable version is 7.10, known as Gutsy Gibbon. This version is capable of mounting and reading NTFS-formatted partitions, meaning that it can read the files in your Vista volume on your PC.

A “LiveCD” is a bootable CD of Ubuntu that allows you to load the OS into memory and run from the CD itself. This can be done WITHOUT installing the OS to your hard drive. This is a feature that Ubuntu shares with many other GNU/Linux distros. Amazing, but true!

The process described below will consist of the following major steps:
1) Obtaining the Ubuntu LiveCD
2) Booting the PC using the CD
3) Loading the OS
4) Examining your Desktop
5) Obtaining information on your Vista volume
6) Mounting your Vista volume
7) Attaching an external/USB pendrive or harddrive
8) Copying the Windows files to the attached drive
9) Removing the attached drive
10) Unmounting the Windows volume(s)
11) Shutting down the PC

Note: This guide presumes that the Ubuntu LiveCD will boot your machine and will display a Desktop. While that is generally the case, as with anything related to PCs, that is not always true. If the CD doesn't boot properly for you, you will need to go to the Ubuntu forums to get help. Debugging LiveCD problems is outside the scope of this Forum.

[b][u]1) Obtaining the Ubuntu LiveCD [/u][/b]

The Ubuntu CD image can be downloaded from the following location:
[b][url] http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu [/url][/b]

Click the Download Ubuntu tab

Select the Ubuntu 7.10, Desktop edition release, and Standard personal computer.

Choose a location near you.

Click the Start Download button. The download will begin.

Click the Save to Disk button and choose a location that can store a full CD image (600+ MB).

Notice that under the “Need Help?” section, there are links you can click that will tell you how to burn the image file to CD. If you don't already know how to do this, click and read the information associated with these links.

Note: If you do not have access to working PC to download and burn the image, on the first web page, instead of using the Download Ubuntu tab, click the third tab and request a CD. You will be taken to a page to request CDs. If you want a free one, it will take up to 10 weeks for them to send it to you (after all, it's free!!) But if you're willing to purchase one, you can buy packs of CDs, or individual DVDs. The CD contains the OS; the DVD contains the OS plus a ton of other packages. The DVD is useful if you want to actually install the OS and lots of packages without downloading them from the Ubuntu servers online. The linked pages provide you all the details.

[b][u]2) Booting the PC using the CD(or DVD)[/u][/b]

Now that you have the Ubuntu disk, you need to boot from it.

To do this, you need to change your BIOS settings to boot from CD/DVD. You will have to go into the BIOS settings during you machine boot in order to do that. Each PC is different, but generally, pressing the “Del” key or “F1” will typically put you into a BIOS main menu.

From there, tab to your Boot menu, and rearrange the order of your boot devices to have the CD/DVD device first in the list.

Open the CD/DVD drive, insert the Ubuntu disk, close the drive door.

Exit and Save (usually “F10").

Reboot the machine.

When it reboots, it will read the Ubuntu disk and bring up a menu. The screen will have a black background. Centered at the top will be the Ubuntu logo and the word Ubuntu in white transparent letters. Below that will be a menu, the first item being “Start or install Ubuntu”, shown in white, with the remaining menu items shown in brown. At the bottom of the screen will be a function key bar, ranging from F1 Help, to F6 Other options.

If you see this menu, then you're in good shape; if not, Ubuntu has problems with your video card/chip. Solving such problems is beyond the scope of this article. Go to the Ubuntu forum to get details on such solutions.

When the first menu entry is shown in white text, press the Enter key. This will start the OS loading process.

[b][u]3) Loading the OS [/u][/b]

This will take a while – several minutes.

While this is happening, a progress bar will appear in the middle of the screen.

When done, the screen will go black while the Desktop loads.

[b][u]4) Examining your Desktop[/u][/b]

Welcome to Ubuntu, or more specifically, to the Gnome desktop of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu comes with several different Desktops. Gnome is loaded by default. KDE (Kubuntu) and XFCE (Xubuntu) are others, along with additional variants.

Along the top edge of the Desktop, you will see (from the left) the Ubuntu logo, the Applications menu entry, the Places menu entry, the System menu entry, an icon for Firefox, an icon for Evolution Mail, and an icon for Ubuntu Help. If you click the Ubuntu logo, you'll get a pulldown, tiered menu of programs, much like the “old” XP programs menu but tiering from the top of the Desktop instead of the bottom.

On the top right of the Desktop, you should see an icon for Network connection, the date and time (yes, it's on the top instead of the bottom of the screen), and a running figure. This figure on the right serves much the same function as pressing the Start button in windows and selecting a shutdown option.

On the bottom left of the Desktop, you will see a button to press to hide all the windows on the Desktop, and an area to hold tabs for launched programs (similar to the TaskBar in Windows).

On the bottom right of the Desktop (the area in Windows known as the System Tray) you will see icons for Desktop selection (multiple desktops are available by default) and the trash can (yes, on the lower right instead of the upper left).

Note: Please be PATIENT when clicking on anything on the desktop. The delay is not an indicator of Ubuntu being slow, quite the opposite, Ubuntu is lightening fast. The delay is due to the fact that you are actually running the OS from the CD/DVD without loading it to your hard drive. That means that every menu click requires searching the CD/DVD and loading the program into memory before executing it. That all takes time.

[b][u]5) Obtaining information on your Vista volume[/u][/b]

Now that you're running Ubuntu, it's time to locate your Vista volume.

To do this, you first have to open a Terminal window. This is much the same function as opening a command window in Windows. Click Applications --> Accessories --> Terminal. A terminal window will open on the Desktop.

Click the mouse inside this window and type “sudo fdisk -l”. The “sudo” is short for “super user do” and is instructing Ubuntu to run the following command as Root (much the same as the default Administrator in Vista). The “fdisk -l” command (that's dash-ell, not dash-one) displays information on your “fixed” disks. Don't worry, it's NOT going to reformat your disks!

You will get a scrolling display of information, with a block of information for each disk, followed by a list of partitions on that disk. Look for the disk that has “HPFS/NTFS” under the right-most “System” column. These are Windows partitions. If you only have Vista on your machine, and you only have one partition, it will be “sda1”. If you have more than one windows partition, but only Vista on your machine, it will still probably be “sda1”.

If you have more than one OS (e.g., both XP and Vista), you'll have to sort out which partition belongs to which OS on your own. Ubuntu sees only the partitions; it doesn't know one Windows OS from another.

When you locate your Vista volume in the display, notice the “Device” information in the left-most column. You will see something like “dev/sda1” or “dev/hdc1”. The “sd” indicates it's a SATA drive; the “hd” indicates it's a PATA (IDE) drive.

Your first SATA drive is always “sda”, followed by “sdb”, “sdc”.., etc.

Your first PATA/IDE drive is always “hdc”, followed by “hdd”, “hde”, etc.

The numbers following the “sda” or “hdc” are the individual partitions on each drive.

Make note of the “sd” or “hd” designation of your Vista volume – you will need it later.

[b][u]6) Mounting your Vista volume[/u][/b]

Ubuntu can't work with a volume until it is mounted, This action assigns the volume a Mount Point in the file system and also tells Ubuntu whether to mount it read-only or read-write. For our purposes, to prevent any further damage to your Vista volume, we want to mount it read-only.

To do this, we will need to use the Mount command.

To see what volumes are already mounted, type “mount” in the terminal window. You will see a list of all the mounted volumes, along thwi the device, the root directory in the file system for that volume, the type of filesystem on that volume, and mount parameters.

To prepare for mounting the Vista volume, we need to create a Mount Point for it in the filesystem. To do this, enter the following command in the Terminal window: “sudo mkdir /media/Vista”Notice that the directory separators are forward slashes, not backward slashes (as in Windows).

To see if this worked, type the following command in the Terminal window: “ls -l /media”. You should get a list of directories under /media, with an entry for Vista.

Now, it's time to do the actual Mount operation. Let's presume the Vista volume is “sda1”.

To do this, enter the following command in the Terminal window:
“sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/Vista -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222”

This will mount your Vista volume under the /media/Vista directory in the filesystem, and will mount it read-only. It should also open a Nautilus (the default Gnome equivalent of Windows Explorer) window with the contents of your Vista volume listed.

This is essentially the “C” drive of your Vista machine. One way to tell that you have the correct volume is to scroll down through the file list. You should see a folder for Program Files, and down near the bottom, you should see an entry for pagefile.sys.

Don't worry if you open the Documents and Setting folder and find it empty. That's the way it's supposed to be. In Vista, that is just a link to the real directory – which is under Users.

If you don't see these, you've mounted the wrong volume. But. no harm done! You mounted this read-only, so you're not going to be able to damage it in any way. Just page down to the bottom of this guide and see the section on Unmounting the volume. Do that and come back to this step, entering a different Mount command.

If you have more than one windows partition, and you should, such that your data is not in the Vista volume, do the same steps as above with the exception that you'll need to create a Mount Point for this second drive, Name that /media/Mydata and repeat the commands above but using this Mount Point instead.

[b][u]7) Attaching an external USB pendrive or harddrive[/u][/b]

Mounting an external USB pendrive or harddrive in Ubuntu is no harder than it is in Vista – you just plug it in.

Ubuntu will detect the new drive and add an icon to your deskop for the device. The drive icon will most probably have the name of “disk”. It might also automatically open a Nautilus window for that drive. If not, double-click the drive icon to open an Nautilus window.

[b][u]8) Copying the Windows files to the attached drive[/u][/b]

To copy files and folders, you use the same drag-and-drop approach as you learned in Windows.

Navigate through the folders structure to the folders and files you want to copy, click on the source, drag the mouse to the attached drive, and release the mouse button.

Ubuntu will copy the folders and files to the attached drive.

[b][u]9) Removing the attached drive[/u][/b]

When done, you need to Unmount the attached drive.

In Vista, you have to hunt down the icon in the System Tray area. But in Ubuntu, you close any Nautilus windows you have open for the attached drive, right click the drive icon on the Desktop, and select Unmount Volume.

You will see the drive icon vanish from the Desktop.

You can now unplug the attached drive.

[b][u]10) Unmounting the Window(s) volumes[/u][/b]

Since you mounted the Windows volume(s) using the Terminal, you must Unmount them the same way.

First, close any Nautilus windows associated with your Windows volumes.

Second, enter the “umount” command, as follows:

“sudo umount /dev/sda1” (using the same “dev” designation as you did in the Mount command)

Do this for each Windows volume you mounted.

[b][u]11) Shutting down the PC[/u][/b]

You're nearly done!!! Your files are on an external drive now, and you can plug that drive into any Windows box to see them.

To shut down the PC, click on the running figure on the upper-right corner of the screen and select Shutdown.

At some point, you get a message on the screen to remove the CD/DVD and press Enter. Remove the media, then press Enter.

Your machine will then shut done.

please help mr stooopid (me)

the w — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:10:50 GMT

ok, so i was trying to shred the free space on my hard drive to get rid of deleted files (client data, documents, etc...). i used BC Wipe on the 35 pass method wiping file slack, MFT entries, free space, etc... when i rebooted, my keyboard wouldn't work. ok, no problem - i used the on-screen keyboard ease-of-access option and the mouse and logged in. i went to the drivers and found my 'missing' driver and updated it from the internet. i rebooted again, and now the thing just keeps black-screening me. the wiping process removed all my restore points (except for the one that went in after I updated the driver) so there isn't anything for me to go back to. system restore and startup repair are useless. i do not have backup disks (yea, ok , i got it - make backup disks next time) so the complete PC restore is not an option either. i really don't want to lose all my files if i do a recovery.

ok, so i went to the command prompt and successfully used DOS commands (wow, huh) to copy a few files to a thumb drive. that made me feel a little better...

i have a few ideas, but please help me.

1- i can find a way to restore the missing file or driver or whatever and go back to my state of ignornant bliss (yes, i will do a backup this time)

2- i can transfer all the data to another computer somehow using some conglomeration of cables and voodoo

3- i can take a portable harddrive and pull all my docs to it and then do the recovery (but will it take my hidden/encrypted docs?) also, anyone know any high-speed copy everything commands from command prompt? seems like 'copy *.* e:' sounds right but will it get the hidden/encrypted files?

4- i can do the recovery and hope to be able to undelete all my files ):

5- I can tell my boss, pack my desk, call my clients, and move to someplace where no one knows me.

I am running Vista on a toshiba sattelite A135-S4467, 1gig RAM, 160gig HD, Intel Core 2 Duo T5200 / 1.6 GHz , Chipset type Mobile Intel 945GM Express

I would prefer we start at option 1...

Thank you in advance.

Windows won't boot after installing a new graphics card...

Messiah — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:22:20 GMT

As you can tell I'm new here, and this is my first post! :D
Well, I got a new graphics card, a nVIDIA GeForce 6200 256MB PCI Card.
I tried to install it my self, it didn't work out to well... I know a guy who knows everything about that stuff, so I got him to do it for me, and he had it up and running (Fixed tons of other problems also) in about an hour and a half. It booted fine, and very fast over at his house. When I brought it home and hooked it to my LCD TV (My monitor fried itself :crazy: ), Windows was booting fine, then when it got done loading I got a black screen, no mouse or anything, and my computer shut off. I tried it again, same thing over and over. I can boot into safe mode though. But when I do my computer seems a little buggy, because it freezes up when I do some things, or some things just don't even work.
*I would call my friend and find out whats going on, but he went out of town for a couple of days, and I need this working as soon as possible*

Whats possibly going wrong here? How can I get into regular mode without it messing up?

Unable to fully boot from a CD/DVD

pele75 — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:03:27 GMT

I am in need of help. I am trying to reformat and perform a clean install of Windows Vista Ultimate. When I restart my computer with the legitimate Windows Vista installation DVD my computer says push any key to boot from CD or DVD... so I push any key. Then it says loading files (which it is doing, loading from the DVD, I can hear it working). Then it shows Microsoft Corporation and has the green bars going from left to right.

Then it displays a black screen with nothing on it and the DVD stops spinning and nothing happens. I let it sit, hoping something would appear, for 12 hours. Nothing.

So I tried booting from a CD with MRI4.8 and I can perform all the tests off the CD fine. But when I try to actually run the OS part from the CD it goes to the same black screen (btw, the tests of the CD/DVD drive all say it works fine, plus I did a non-clean install from Windows and it re-installed Vista from the same DVD just without the all-important reformat).

So, I have no idea what is going on and what I should do to fix it. I would really like to be able to reformat my computer.

HP Pavilion dv6500

1.5Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo T5250

4 GB DDR2

Nvidia GeForce 8400M GS

200 GB Hard disc

15.4"

Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN

Crashed! Safe mode works. SysRestore does nothing. Help please!

spacifique1 — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:38:53 GMT

I've been burning DVDs all day today. At one point, the system became very slow and would not respond. I tried everything but finally had to use power button to kill the laptop.

I rebooted the system, but once i login, the system keeps booting until the HDD stops. I tried F8 and Sysrestore (a few times) but no result; HDD stops after about 30 seconds. If I restart and leave it on Login screen, HDD stops again after a few seconds. Looks like something is killing the HDD in normal mode (not safe mode).

Mouse does not freeze, but ctrl+alt+del does not work.

Safe mode works perfectly. I can transfer files between HDDs without any problem. I can access HDD and everything...

If I login quickly enough, HDD stops after a while and nothing (sidebar, AVG, etc...) loads. The mouse cursor shows busy when hovering on taskbar.

HP Dv9515Tx

Vista Home Premium (pre-loaded)

C: is on primary HDD and HP recovery is on a partition of primary HDD. The partition was factory.

I tried all the normal ways to startup.

Any help would be great.

Recovering from the "endless reboot" problem

WAW8 — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:56:29 GMT

Microsoft has acknowledged that a recent Windows Update used to prepare your machine for the upgrade to Vista SP1 may result in your machine being put into a state where it keeps rebooting -- over, and over, and over.

To address this, they have released KB949358, providing three ways to fix your machine.

This KB article is linked below:

[b][url] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949358 [/url][/b]

My admin account missing after reset

eesia — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:28:03 GMT

Hi all.

I just received a laptop from my company and I set up a home network, etc. and when I rebotted, my account (under a specified domain) was missing and others were listed that were not listed the first time.

It's almost as if my Domain was removed.

With XP, you could select the domain from the login dialog.

There is no such dialog that I can see in Vista. Is there any way to select domains from the login screen?

I don't have any of the other passwords, so I'm in deep doo doo if I can't select the domain.

I also have tried to boot up with last known good configuration, etc...no joy.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

WinRE cannot see my DVD's

Platipus — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:20:41 GMT

I am trying to do a full computer restoration from DVDs that I made after one of my hard drives failed. I can see the contents of my DVDs. They have big VHD files and a few XML files. I have used recovery disks to take the notebook to factory settings but as soon as I tried to do a full restoration, none of the disks could be recognised except for when I put my last disk(disk 10) in the drive and it was recognised but when I pressed the next button this message came up. 'The Windows Recovery Environment is loaded from a hard disk, but windows needs to format that disk to restore your computer. Reboot from a CD or DVD and try to restore again.' Any ideas anyone?

Vista wont boot after update

mjm295 — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 04:52:36 GMT

Hi All

I woke this morning to find the Vista install doing an automatic update. I left this and saw it try to reboot. The Shutdown screen appeared... and stayed. It was like this for over an hour so I hard resetted it.

Now Vista will not boot.

My dual boot Linux install works fine, and I can see the windows file from the Linux partition.

When I select Vista from the Grub boot loader, I get a windows install not found error.
When I boot from the recovery partition - I get no restore points available.
When I try to reinstall from the recovery partition menu - it complains that the C drive is too small or not available.

I pinched 40Gb from the C drive for the Linux install, leaving 100Gb plus for the Vista. This was about a month ago and it has all worked perfectly for that month. Like an idiot I never got around to creating a recovery DVD.....

EDIT:

I found this in the Windows Update log (accessed through the Linux partition)
2008-02-14 03:16:55:974 1172 7f88 AU Setting AU scheduled install time to 2008-02-15 03:00:00

2008-02-14 03:17:00:970 1172 69e8 Report REPORT EVENT: {5799BAC1-56F4-4944-862E-9DE7AFEAB1A2} 2008-02-14 03:16:55:971-0000 1 162 101 {A8944CC2-C640-42AB-96EB-CA18473B3BD7} 105 0 AutomaticUpdates Success Content Download Download succeeded.

2008-02-14 03:17:00:970 1172 69e8 Report REPORT EVENT: {3FB452A9-013A-437A-91AF-2213D98700DE} 2008-02-14 03:16:55:974-0000 1 188 102 {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} 0 0 AutomaticUpdates Success Content Install Installation Ready: The following updates are downloaded and ready for installation. This computer is currently scheduled to install these updates on ‎15 ‎February ‎2008 at 03:00: - Update for Windows Vista (KB937287)

2008-02-14 03:18:22:210 1172 1138 AU AU invoking RebootSystem (OnRebootNow)

2008-02-14 03:18:22:946 1172 1138 Misc WARNING: SUS Client is rebooting system.

2008-02-14 03:18:22:946 1172 1138 AU AU invoking RebootSystem (OnRebootRetry)

2008-02-14 03:18:32:946 1172 1138 AU AU invoking RebootSystem (OnRebootRetry)

2008-02-14 03:18:32:961 1172 1138 Misc WARNING: SUS Client is rebooting system.

2008-02-14 03:18:33:101 1172 1138 AU AU received handle event

2008-02-14 03:18:38:045 1172 1138 AU Launched new AU client for directive 'Reboot Warning', session id = 0x1

2008-02-14 03:18:38:145 1172 1138 AU AU received handle event

2008-02-14 03:18:42:996 1172 1138 AU AU invoking RebootSystem (OnRebootRetry)

2008-02-14 03:18:42:996 1172 1138 Misc WARNING: SUS Client is rebooting system.

2008-02-14 03:18:53:011 1172 1138 AU AU invoking RebootSystem (OnRebootRetry)

2008-02-14 03:18:53:011 1172 1138 Misc WARNING: SUS Client is rebooting system.

2008-02-14 03:18:53:073 1172 1138 AU Launched new AU client for directive 'Reboot Warning', session id = 0x1

2008-02-14 03:18:53:183 1172 1138 AU AU received handle event

2008-02-14 03:19:01:217 1172 1138 AU WARNING: Initiating reboot since no user logged on

2008-02-14 03:19:01:217 1172 1138 AU AU invoking RebootSystem (OnRebootNow)

2008-02-14 03:19:01:217 1172 1138 Misc WARNING: Failed to reboot system, hr=8007045B.

2008-02-14 03:19:01:217 1172 1138 AU WARNING: RebootSystem (InitiateSystemShutdown) failed, error = 0x8007045B

2008-02-14 03:19:02:948 1172 1138 Shutdwn user declined update at shutdown

2008-02-14 03:19:02:948 1172 1138 AU AU initiates service shutdown

2008-02-14 03:19:02:964 1172 1138 AU ########### AU: Uninitializing Automatic Updates ###########

2008-02-14 03:19:03:884 1172 1138 Service *********

2008-02-14 03:19:03:884 1172 1138 Service ** END ** Service: Service exit [Exit code = 0x240001]

2008-02-14 03:19:03:884 1172 1138 Service *************

Reinstall your preinstalled Vista environment

WAW8 — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 07:48:02 GMT

The following link walks you through the steps of reinstalling your Vista environment on a machine that came with Vista preinstalled. Note that this is NOT a way to work around activation; it is only a way to recover your legitimate installation:

[url] http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228 [/url]

Vista ultimate 64 boot problem

leadplayer — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:01:46 GMT

First all I'm new here so I want to say hello to all. Well a couple days ago I was working on my PC (luckily not a customers) I was really sick wasn't thinking my best and installed a copy of xp 64 on a system with vista ultimate 64 already on it, and lost boot capabilities for vista. I knew you could install a copy of vista after xp and the bootloader info gets included in the boot.ini. But needless to say I did it backwards :-), so my question is what is the safest way to fix this problem. The partition size where vista is is located is 300 gigs and holds alot if important music recordings of my bands, customers bands and plugins for all my recording programs so I would like to keep the data, they are backed up however I would like to keep these versions so I don't need to unpack the backups again. I included a copy of my current boot.ini file. C:\ is my current System drive and is where this copy of my boot.ini is located.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks in advance for all of your help, and I look forward to helping others when I can, vista is fairly new to me so I'm learning as I go. Thanks again

John Dullebawn

Factory Restore on Acer Extensa 5610

mario-182 — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:43:39 GMT

Hi everyone,
I've recently been having a lot of indescribable problems with my 4 month old notebook running on vista
I recently took it to Chile, from Australia, and was told that it might have 'electrical' problems due to voltage differences..
But it seems that that problem was scrapped;
right now on startup it switches to the old W98-grey style theme..,
it runs extremely slow, most system tools don't operate, it can't find my WI-FI connection and I'm constantly getting signs saying countless amounts of programs stopped working and were shut down, system programs I'm guessing because I've never heard of half of them.
I was about to downgrade to XP, but I don't really want to anymore
And to top things off, my external HDD is been serviced, so I can't back all my files up in order to do a factory restore
But I've just been snooping around the eRecovery tool and the warning said "all data from the C: drive will be overwritten"

My question is, if i move all my important files to the F: and take out the factory restore, will the files in the F drive be erased at all?
I'm guessing not, but there's a lot of files I have to back up, so I'm just making sure

Thank you
Mario

Reverting to a Restore Point

Jason — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:56:55 GMT

NOTE: You can do this inside Vista or from the Vista DVD by booting from it if your Windows install is too corrupt to allow you to login. This fixes most startup problems in Vista.

Windows Vista has a feature called System Restore that automatically backs up registry and system files whenever you install new software or drivers. This feature is useful when you install evil software that makes your computer run really slow. But don't worry, System Restore won't remove Windows Vista.

Using System Restore in Windows

There are two places that you can use the system restore feature from. From within Windows, you can just type restore into the Start menu search box, and you'll immediately see System Restore at the top of the start menu:

Or you can type rstrui into the search box and hit enter. Your choice.

Update

For best results, you should run System Restore from safe mode. If you receive an error while restoring, then use it from safe mode and it should work fine.

Note: If you choose the more geeky way of launching System Restore, you will be rewarded with unlimited credit to Newegg. I'm lying, but wouldn't that be sweet?

You will immediate see a screen where you can choose to roll back the system to the last restore point. You can select "Recommended restore", and just click next, or you can choose a different restore point.

If you do choose a different restore point, you will see a list of restore points that you can choose from. How many times have I typed the word choose at this point?

You'll notice in the screenshot below that the last thing I did was install Virtual CloneDrive to mount ISO images, but right before that I installed the NVIDIA drivers.

Click one of them, and you will have to confirm and then restart your computer to roll the system back.

If your system won't boot

If you can't even get into windows, you can boot off the installation dvd, and choose the "Repair your computer" option on the lower left hand side. Click next on the next screen.

Now choose System Restore from the System Recovery dialog. It will take a few seconds to come up, and you will see the same screen that you would see in Windows:

Click next, and on the next screen select the drive that your copy of Windows Vista is installed on.

Click Finish, and Vista will roll back to the previous restore point. Really pretty simple stuff.

VistaGeeks.com

Total restore and reinstall?

toshA210 — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 19:07:38 GMT

I have a Toshiba Satellite A210 that's only about a month old. It came with Vista Premium installed. One day it wouldn't start and said windows could not open successfully. Foolishly, I hadn't made a recovery disk. I called the toshiba help centre and went through some steps and they said my operating system is corrupt. They've told me my only option is to order a 45 dollar recovery disk from them.

There are no important files on my notebook, so i dont really have anything to lose. my question is...

i have the cd software for windows vista home ultimate. would it work to totally restore my computer to factory settings and then install vista ultimate and start all over again?

if so, how would i go about doing this?

any help is very appreciated!

Backup to XDrive?

doni49 — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:52:54 GMT

I put my laptop in sleep mode instead of "turning it off" over night. I'd like to create a scheduled task that wakes it from sleep, copies all of my personal data to a ZIP file, uploads the zip file to my account on XDrive and puts the laptop back to sleep when finished.

Is it possible to do this? If yes, can someone help me figure out how?

Thanks.

Don

Vista Startup Repair

WAW8 — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:31:09 GMT

When Vista just won't boot (a problem that seems to be increasing in frequency now), you need to use the Startup Repair Tool (SRT) to get your system back.

The link below walks you through doing a Startup Repair in Vista step-by-step:

[url] http://www.windowsvista.windowsreinstall.com/vistaultimate/repairstartup/index.htm [/url]

Many thanks to the WindowsReinstall site for making this available.

Restoring Vista fonts

WAW8 — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:45:54 GMT

We've been getting posts about folks having removed some fonts from Vista and now, they want to restore them. Under XP, you inserted the CD and used the Control Panel to locate the font files and restore them. But under Vista, the DVD doesn't contain individual font files or .CAB files anymore; instead, it contains compressed Windows Image files. So, the procedure is quite different.

However - there is both good news and bad news. Good news is that you can restore the default Windows fonts with a simple command. Bad news is that it's likely to reset your system files back to the state they were in when Vista was first installed, meaning, that there's a risk that ALL windows updates will be lost and have to be reapplied. That's because the operation restores ALL of your Vista system files to their original state, not some of them, and you can't choose which ones to restore.

To do this "fix", you do the following:
1) Open a command window with elevated rights: Enter "cmd" in the start menu, press Ctl-Shift-Enter, click OK on the UAC prompt.
2) In the command window, enter "sfc /scannow". This will scan ALL the windows system files and replace them with the original. It's very likely that it will prompt you to insert the original Vista DVD -- so it can uncompress the original image file and rewrite the system files from that.

The reason I say "very likely" is twofold. First, because I have NOT done this and don't know for sure what it will prompt you for, and second, Vista stores some system stuff when it does the installation. Don't know if it stores enough stuff such that it doesn't require the original DVD to restore the fonts folder.

So, unfortunately, this is a "use at your own risk" activity. Sorry.

Hard Disk Crash

petter.smith0 — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:25:45 GMT

Hard drives are usually reliable devices that store all your important files and data. Today’s Information Age runs on data, making the storage of such worth its weight in gold. However, no matter how evolved this technology has become, these media devices are still prone to serious errors that could result in the loss of invaluable data. Hard drives may crash or may develop logical errors.
Here I am talking about the most disastrous problem with computers, that is, hard drive crash. The diagnosis of hard drive crash alone is sufficient to drive you crazy as all your data is lost with that horrifying scratching and screeching sound. Recently, the hard drive of my computer crashed and I was in the middle of nowhere as all my business data was lost with it. Then like angels in the devils room, the hard disk [url=http://www.hdrconline.com]data recovery[/url] service HDRC entered in my life which helped me a lot to get out of this misery.
All my miseries ended since I associated myself with hard disk data recovery service.

Petter Smith
http://www.hdrconline.com

partition advice sought.

joe-90 — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 04:24:36 GMT

Hi folks, Newbie here so be kind.

After a complete hard drive crash the other day I decided to get a new PC with Vista on it (previously had win 2000). I heard it was a good idea to make restore points so used the wizard. It offered me a slot on the partitioned drive (H). However, when it went through it found out there wasn't enough space on the partition and stopped. Now it keeps nagging me to say that the restore didn't work and I'm short of disk space. By looking around the PC I see that I could shrink the main partition (c drive) which would hopefully give me room for the back-up on H drive. Anyway I followed the instruction (this is a 250 gig drive btw) and instead of doing what I hoped and making the H partition bigger so I could fit more onto it, It freed up some space that is listed as '83gb unallocated.' So what I've got (looking at the computer management screen) is three boxes. The first says ' RECOVERY (H) 9.71 GB NTFS HEALTHY (primary partition). The middle one says ' C 139.39GB NTFS HEALTHY (system, boot, page file, active, crash dump, primary partition) and the end box on the right says 83.79 Unallocated.

If I right click on the first one 'Recovery' I don't get the option to extend.
If I right click on the middle one C drive, I get the option to expand or shrink.
If I right click on the right one (unallocated) it just says 'New simple volume'.

Am I right in guessing that the H partition on the left can't expand because it's squeezed up against the main C drive?
Am I also right in guessing that what I should be doing is finding out how to turn the 'unallocated space' into another drive and doing my restore on that one? If so - can anyone point me in the right direction?

I've also got the issue of the partially completed 'restore point' on the 'Recovery Drive (H)' which vista tells me I'm running out of disck space. I know what time I tried to do this restore point so if I delete the folders created at that time will I be safe in not deleting the factory installed back-up? Any help and advice greatly appreciated.

Windows Vista Home Premium.

Windows Vista imaging concepts for Deployment and Recovery

Jason — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:37:05 GMT

[url=http://4sysops.com/archives/windows-vista-imaging-concepts/]http://4sysops.com/archives/windows-vista-imaging-concepts/[/url]

How to restore to an ealier version of a file

Histone — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 23:32:24 GMT

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask. Say if I have a Word or BMP document that I saved once, and then modified it and saved it again (so the old version is overwritten) but now I want the old version back. Is there any Vista compatible program that allows me to do that? I have programs that can restore deleted files, but not overwritten files. Thank you very much and keep up the good job!

system back up probs

daz103 — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 07:29:37 GMT

Hi everyone

I would like to start off by saying I am not very pc literate & only know the basics when it comes to pc's, so if you could make any relpys as clear & simple as posible I would greatly appreaciate this ;)

I have a new pc (purchased a few months ago) which has vista as its opp system & it automatically prompts you to back up your files every so often (for which it created a sepperate disc space for this itself on 1st start up) well after just doing it this a few nights ago it said something like it wasnt succesful cos no room left & click here to make space, so when I do this the total space I can get is nil so I now have this message:

"The backup did not complete successfully.

An error occured. The following information might help you resolve the error:
There is not enough space to save the backup files. Free up disc space or change your backup
settings.(0x81000005) "

Since this has happened I now get a little popup at the bottom right of the screen saying disk space is low (back up segment of disk) & click to sort it out, which I do & it tells me the space I can make is 0 bytes, so I click more options & the 2nd option is:

System restore & shadow copies.

You can free more disk space by removing all but the most recent restore point.

Clean up.

So I click this & next it asks if I am sure I want to delete all but the most recent restore point? I continue with this & proceed to delete them & absolutly nothing happens so I keep doing it over & over but nothing?? Then it all starts again every time I turn the pc on???

And one other question is that ever since getting the pc it loses a few minutes each week or so & I keep having to manually adjust the time on the pc any ideas on this also please?

Thanks

Darren

Problems copying files to external USB HD

smoothoperator2008 — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:16:14 GMT

If this message has been posted in the wrong section then apologies.

Anyway to get to the point, I recently purchased an Acer Travelmate laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium a couple of months ago, before that I had a Dell laptop, and backed up all my files and programs on a partitioned External HD in a USB Case.

Now for some reason whenever I attempt to copy files from Vista to my external hd, everything freezes then just doesnt copy across. However when i copy files from my external hd to Vista everything works fine, which leaves me to believe that there is some kind of security setting preventing me from copying files from Vista to my external hd, but i just dont know what it is:ermm:, any body got any idea?

your help would be most appreciated:D

G

Create a restore point in Vista

Jason — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 21:05:33 GMT

If you are thinking of installing an application but aren't quite sure what it's going to do to your computer, I would absolutely recommend creating a restore point before you install that application, and here are the steps to do so. Note that most application installs automatically create a restore point, but you can do this if you are really worried.

Open up the Start Menu and right-click on "Computer", and then select "Properties".

This will take you into the System area of Control Panel. Click on the "Advanced system settings" on the left hand side.

Now select the "System Protection" tab to get to the System Restore section.

Click the "Create" button to create a new restore point. You'll be prompted for a name, and you might want to give it a useful name that you'll be able to easily identify later.

Click the Create button, and then the system will create the restore point.

When it's all finished, you'll get a message saying it's completed successfully.

Now if your application blows up Vista, you can restore your computer using System Restore.

howtogeek.com

Vista Computer management partition issue

Truetaylor — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:41:16 GMT

Ok so here's the deal. I was attmpting to make a separate partition on my Vista computer so as to make a dual boot setup with windows XP. Using the new tool on "computer management" called "shrink volume" I shrunk my C: drive by 20 gb. Upon restarting my computer, I get a screen saying something to the effect of "your mbr does not contain any windows data" and upon inserting my Vista disc, and trying to do a repair install, I found that the C drive is now Unallocated and the 20gb drive i made is formatted for use. I have already tried several different things (such as Active@ Partition recovery) and nothing can seem to find the correct partition information... Is there any way to fix this or am I SOL?

Thanks in advance

True

Can I make a backup of my Vista DVD?

eastley — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:07:00 GMT

I'm not sure on what Microsoft's view of this is but I just brought Vista Ultimate and was wondering if I could make a backup of the DVD so I can keep my original safe from any harm?

Vista Home Premium 32-Bit Password reset?

david-cameron07 — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:50:11 GMT

I'm running Vista Home Premium 32-Bit on a Dell Dimension E520 and am the only user on the machine. However, the password for my user account "DAVID" is not accepted by the computer despite knowing exactly what the password is. I phoned software support services at Dell and they claim the only way for me to solve the situation is to re-install the operating system, and hence losing all current data saved on the computer.

Surely there is some other more logical solution to the problem? I can't really afford to loose all the data on the computer but if that is the only option I would rather go ahead with it ASAP.

Thanks in advance for any feedback

Using Vista's Recovery Enviorment (WinRE)

Jason — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 12:11:05 GMT

The new Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) detects and fixes startup related problems. It can be accessed by pressing F8 during startup. The system then boots into the WinRE interface and offers various tests as well as recovery and failure detection tools. WinRE automatically detects blue screen errors and registry damage and tries to repair the system and get it up and running quickly.

The Windows System Recovery tools have been significantly expanded to take advantage of the new graphical setup environment. A "toolbox" is presented to the user, offering access to repair functions, System Restore, a new memory diagnostic tool, access to CompletePC backup images, and access to a command prompt. Multiple command prompts can be spawned at once, and more command-line tools are available. Command prompts can be spawned at any time during setup by pressing Ctrl+F10.

The recovery environment can be loaded in one of two ways: either automatically, if the computer manufacturer or IT administrator created a separate partition with Windows Recovery Environment installed on it, or manually using either the Windows Vista DVD or the on-disk recovery environment. When Windows RE is installed on the hard disk, it can be accessed by pressing the F8 key when the system is booting.

Here is how it works in the automatic scenario (with the Windows RE partition). At startup, the Windows loader sets a flag to show that the boot process has started. If the boot is successful, we clear the flag right before the Windows logon screen is displayed. However, if the boot fails, the flag is never cleared so that the next time the computer tries to boot, the Windows loader see that the flag was not cleared and assumes that the boot failed, so the loader launches the Windows Recovery Environment instead of Windows Vista. If you don't have the automatic mode, you can use the Windows Vista DVD to load the Startup Repair tool.

Once loaded, the Startup Repair starts checking for potential problems to see why the system failed to boot by grinding through the following questions: Is the problem a missing or damaged boot configuration file? Is the problem due to missing or damaged system files? Is it due to a missing or damaged driver? An incompatible driver? An incompatible OS update? In all of these cases, if a problem is found, the system will attempt to correct the problem either by restoring a file using a cache of files (for example, a corrupted driver file), using a system restore point, or recreating a database using other data (such as rebuilding a registry hive or the file system). The system will also detect and report a bad hard disk or bad memory, but given that these are hardware issues, we can’t do much to fix them.

One very cool thing about the Windows Recovery Environment is that the computer manufacturer or IT administrator will be able to store a "base" configuration on the recovery partition. That way the user will have the ability to restore their Windows Vista PC to the "factory new" state without having to reinstall the operating system. Also, if you enable Windows Backup, you can restore the backed-up system state using Windows RE