Vista won't boot. Please help!

ancapailldorcha

Hi guys,

Hope ye don't mind me asking and that it's ok to put this here. I loaned my laptop to my flatmate last night as hers was broken. This morning I switched it on and the loading screen for vista stayed there for ages (the one with the green bar). Anyway, it won't go past that. I tried booting in safe mode and got the same problem with "Please Wait" written under the list of files. Is there anything I can do. It's a HP dv8000 Pavilion laptop. The shiny brown one. I just cannot afford another. It wouldn't create a recovery disc when I tried ages ago so I don't have a disc.

Thanks in advance!!!

homer911

If you have a Vista disk, you could probably boot from the DVD and do a repair

ancapailldorcha

My computer never came with one. I tried making a recovery disc but the disc creator refused to do it.

Fysh

I presume from the fact that you're posting here that you've got access to a working computer. If so, go here and download the Vista Recovery Environment ISO image. If the computer you're using doesn't have CD-burning software, download and install something like CDBurnerXP. Burn the ISO to a CD, then boot from the CD. From that point it's reasonably straightforward, but there are instructions here if you're not sure what to do.

ancapailldorcha

Hi Fysh, Thanks for that. I'm using the work computer for this. I'll give that a try when I'm off tomorrow. Ta buddy!!

coolpix23

I think you can use ANY Vista DVD to boot far enough to get the repair options.

A friend of mine wanted a fresh install of Vista on a Compaq/HP laptop and using a "Dell" Vista DVD I got the repair options. As it happened she still had a working system so had copied off all the files she wanted so I tried a fresh install from the "Dell" Vista DVD and used the COA (Certificate Of Authenticity) number from her system with authentication over the internet and it was happy.

a GOTCHA - boot device order, usually it's 1st hard disk drive, (then floppy if present) then DVD/CD then usb. Here's the gotcha, if the BIOS hands over to the hard drive and there's enough of an OS on there the BIOS might reckon, don't try the DVD/CD, it might be as simple as just changing the boot device order, to get it to boot from the DVD to give you the repair options.

It depends on the BIOS but try pressing the F12 key a few times after the black screen disappears or if no black screen when it "sounds" like it's doing something. Maybe try F2? on older systems/BIOS's ? if you know the motherboard/BIOS try google for that BIOS setup. It's usually F12.

(BTW You might want a new flat mate lol)

DON'T DO A RE-INSTALL YET
there are lots of possibilates yet

coolpix23

Just after I posted that I remembered a post on a forum that might save your flatmate. It was about XP.

It was a PC doctor/guy who had a client who had shut down the Laptop/PC during an update.

Bad news you'll might still have to get into some type of repair mode/safe mode.

The solution was get into safe mode and disable Windows Update!

what was happening was Windows Update started, the client shut down the computer, prob fell asleap or the batery ran out and tried to connect to complete the update but the WiFi/broadband wasn't connected until windows was connected , so it failed.

A way around that... connect using the LAN cable, you'll only have to do it once to get up and running

IF
T CAN TAKE 12 or MORE HOURS!

coolpix23

Just after I posted that I remembered a post on a forum that might save your flatmate. It was about XP.

It was a PC doctor/guy who had a client who had shut down the Laptop/PC during an update.

Bad news you'll might still have to get into some type of repair mode/safe mode.

The solution was get into safe mode and disable Windows Update!

what was happening was Windows Update started, the client shut down the computer, prob fell asleap or the batery ran out and tried to connect to complete the update but the WiFi/broadband wasn't connected until windows was connected , so it failed.

A way around that... connect using the LAN cable, you'll only have to do it once to get up and running

IF
T CAN TAKE 12 or MORE HOURS!

Overheal

@coolpic the Windows Recovery Environment disc is not a reinstall nor is it capable of doing so. All it's for is performing basic Boot from CD tasks, like running the diskchecker to find what is likely a Disk Error caused by something similar to what you said: the computer probably lost power when writing something important to the disk. Running the system repair utility will take time, but will usually take care of startup problems. Documents and programs are unaffected.

Because they don't contain the information necessary to install Windows the are available to download free.

http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/

ancapailldorcha

Ok guys, I called out a guy who wanted to format my hard drive and then reinstall windows for me. It would have cost £100 or more so I just googled "vista recovery disc" and burned it at a cyber cafe. Fixed it nicely. It still gives me the BSOD from time to time but it has been doing that for a year now.

Thanks for all the replies and sorry for taking so long to post back!!

Overheal

It still gives me the BSOD from time to time but it has been doing that for a year now.

with what error code