Vista Startup Not....

Gadgetman496

I have a Dell Inspiron 530 Vista 32bit home that is just refusing to startup.

It gets to the Vista green moving segment bar and then moves to the window that should display the blue circular Vista logo (just before it would go to the welcome screen or desktop) but that logo never appears, it just sits there with a mouse pointer (movable) on a black screen.

I've tried all the methods I know of to repair the bootloader and MBR but nothing seems to make any difference.

I can also get to the safe mode menu by taping the F8 key on startup but it just goes the motions but never actually boots to safe mode either. I can also get to the repair options if I boot from an actual Vista installation DVD but again it just seems to go through the motions with no fix for the initial boot issue.

It has a recovery partition but at no point through any of the repair menus do I see an option to run the factory restore??? I can't seem to find any hot key to invoke a system recovery either :mad:

I whipped out the drive and caddied it to my main machine and everything seems to be there including the recovery partition which contains a folder called "Tools" and within that there is a file called "PCRestore.exe" If I run that while the drive is caddied it brings up the factory default restore screen but I haven't advanced that as it might fook up the machine it's caddied to????

Any suggestions as to how I might fix this boot issue or even get the factory restore to appear so I can run it?

old_aussie

1 Turn on the computer.

2 As the computer starts, press <F8> on the keyboard until the Advanced Boot Options menu appears on the screen.
Note:You must press <F8> before the Windows logo appears on the screen. If you press <F8> after the Windows logo appears on the screen, the Advanced Boot Options menu will not appear on the screen. If you do not see the Advanced Boot Options menu, restart the computer, and then repeat this step until you see the menu on the screen.


3 Press the <Down Arrow> on the keyboard to select Repair Your Computer on the Advanced Boot Options menu, and then press <Enter>.

4 Specify the language settings that you want, and then click Next.

5 Log in as a user who has administrative credentials, and then click OK.

6 Click Dell Factory Image Restore.

7 In the Dell Factory Image Restore window, click Next.

8 Click to select the Yes, reformat hard drive and restore system software to factory condition check box.

9 Click Next.
The computer is restored to the default factory configuration.

10 When the restore operation is completed, click Finish to restart the computer.
The software is now installed as it was when the computer was first received.

From this link.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&docid=DSN_3E48AE3870775D64E040A68F5B2877D4&isLegacy=true

Gadgetman496

Thanks old aussie but that's the problem I encountering when I get to the "Repair Your Computer on the Advanced Boot Options menu" items 5,6 & 7 don't appear in the options anywhere.

5 Log in as a user who has administrative credentials, and then click OK.

6 Click Dell Factory Image Restore.

7 In the Dell Factory Image Restore window, click Next.

PapaQuebec

Backup your data to another drive, then dump vista and install win7!

Gadgetman496

PapaQuebec wrote: »

Backup your data to another drive, then dump vista and install win7!

Would love to but can't as it's not my machine

holcus

If you still want to rescue this OS

1. backup all data
2. run chkdsk from recovery console
3. test hdd for bad sectors (MHDD or Victoria)
4. test hdd for malicious software and remove what you can
5. if any viruses found run MS repair startup tool again

This is a known problem with Vista, often called the KSOD. Even MS don't have a fix, wipe and reinstall is the only way. Sometimes you can use System Restore in WinRE but in many cases it claims there's no restore points available.

Gadgetman496

Karsini wrote: »

This is a known problem with Vista, often called the KSOD. Even MS don't have a fix, wipe and reinstall is the only way. Sometimes you can use System Restore in WinRE but in many cases it claims there's no restore points available.

You're spot on there Karsini, the system restore did indeed claim there were no restore points.

I am handy enough when it comes to troubleshooting issues like that and always get that extra bit of help here when stuck, but this one beat me

I spoke to the owner and as PapaQuebec suggested earlier, I wiped & installed Win 7 Ultimate. I was pleasantly surprised to see the the device manager was totally error free after the initial install too

Seems to be running sweet now.

Thanks to all for the input