Vista RTM was working, but now it will not boot - Recovery Options?

[Jay Bollyn]

Vista RTM was working, but now it will not boot. What are my recovery options?

WinXP is installed on Disk 0. Vista is installed on Disk 1. Dell Dimension XPS Gen5. Pentium 4 3.8GHz, 2GB RAM.

One of the things I did before this problem started is I chose the 'classic' start menu, which was working. I also gave Administrators and SYSTEM permission 'Full Control' of the entire volume.

When I reboot now, I only get a working mouse pointer and nothing else - no desktop, no start menu, keyboard does nothing, ctrl-alt-del does nothing. Must press and hold power button to power off.

The Vista boot options menu does not have 'last known good' anymore, which might help in this case. Booting into safe mode does exactly the same thing as trying to boot in normal mode.

I tried to CD boot from Disk 1, but it seems to go right into Vista installation. I had hoped for a repair option.

Unless I am missing something obvious, I won't be rolling Vista out until SP1 is released.

Any suggestions? Looks like I will need to CD boot Disk 1 and follow the re-installation. But unless I know what went wrong, it could happen again.

J.

[Jay Bollyn]

OK, I found the repair options on the next screen, but they weren't any help. No restore points had been created, and no startup errors were detected. I am going through the re-install from the five CDs.

So I will be creating a manual restore point before making any significant software configuration changes.

J.

[Jim Kisco]

Looks like a service became corrupted possibly. System Restore has always been a chancey endeaver.

This looks like a dual boot setup, so why not just install the Vista OS, and not have WinXP.

Make sure the startup volume is created by Vista only.

What version of Vista are you using?

Jim

[Jay Bollyn]

There are known issues with IE7. I was downloading Vista through MS TechNet Plus, and IE7 (on winXP) was not handling the secure download website properly. I eventually called TechNet tech support, and they told me the trouble was caused by IE7.

We have proprietary systems that do not always work properly with a new OS. So the prudent thing is to test for a couple months after RTM is released.

J.

[Jim Kisco]

I've been testing IE7 since May of 2006, and I've had issues also.

So I'm not surprised this happen.

My download issue was playing MP3 and WMA files from a website.

So the more you are on the cutting edge, the higher chance of getting cut more often...........

Windows Vista deployment seminars start in Feb., so I'm sure you problem will become more solved.

Regards,
Jim

[Jay Bollyn]

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