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

WAW8 — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:48:43 GMT

During startup, you should get a line of text at the top of the screen tell you to "Press any key to boot from CD/DVD" (or something like that). If you're NOT getting that line of text, either your machine is not reading the medium, or it is not a bootable disk.

Verify that you have your BIOS set to boot from the optical drive first.

Also, if you have a different disk that you KNOW is bootable, try using that to confirm that your machine can boot from the optical drive.

The flashing cursor is what you will see if there is no OS on the volume (or, if the loader can't find one).

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

spark001uk — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:49:59 GMT

well, ive just burnt the vista recovery disc (MS made it for people who dont have original install discs), and this just spins up for a few secs and i get a flashing cursor on a black screen, thats it. Should something come up on screen quite quickly?

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

WAW8 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:39:42 GMT

To do a startup repair, you need a bootable Vista DVD. The media supplied by the OEMs, and usually the same disks you burn yourself using the OEM utilities, may or may not perform a startup repair -- it depends on what the OEM includes in the disks.

I recently did a full restore of an HP desktop using certified HP media and it took over 8 hours! I tried to restore the same machine first using a recovery DVD, but while that kind-of worked, it failed to install some device drivers. So, I did the full machine rebuild.

If you don't get a menu screen when you boot from the HP media, you'll need to contact them to find out why.

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