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06-22-2009, 10:13 PM
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Windows Vista not booting
My grandson's laptop is not booting and of course he can't find the recovery disk I made for him. I tried booting in safe mod.. same thing just a blank screen. It tries to load windows but then nothing comes up
I have Window's Xp CD, can I install over Vista. Do I need to make a CD with fdisk and command.com?
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06-22-2009, 11:15 PM
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Location: Orange County CA
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fdisk and command.com? haha, not this isn't 1994 and DOS anymore.
The XP CD has all the tools needed to delete an existing partition and create a new one before installing Windows.
I wouldn't advise installing XP unless you have a valid license for that computer and you know you had the proper XP drivers as many machines that came with Vista lack older drivers.
I'd be more interested in figuring out what went wrong with Vista (such as a failing hard drive or memory) rather than having a knee-jerk reaction of installing an older OS.
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06-23-2009, 06:26 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EscapeCalifornia
fdisk and command.com? haha, not this isn't 1994 and DOS anymore.
The XP CD has all the tools needed to delete an existing partition and create a new one before installing Windows.
I wouldn't advise installing XP unless you have a valid license for that computer and you know you had the proper XP drivers as many machines that came with Vista lack older drivers.
I'd be more interested in figuring out what went wrong with Vista (such as a failing hard drive or memory) rather than having a knee-jerk reaction of installing an older OS.
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X2, you'll do nothing but end up with a different kind of problem. Download Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test from Support - Downloads and Utilities and do a full scan with it, first thing that needs to be done is to test the hard drive. If it passes download and run memtest to test the system memory. Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool |
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06-23-2009, 12:08 PM
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Thanks..I got a recovery disk online and that at least fixed part of the problem however, now running chkdsk it has a large amt of file record segment is unreadable. It is still running but I am at a loss now is there anything I can do to save the hdd? I have seen software offered that is suppose to fix this but it isn't cheap.
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If you change the way you look at things, it will change the way things look. - William Dyer
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06-23-2009, 01:15 PM
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Did you run the hard drive diagnostics like I suggested? chkdsk is NOT a hard drive diagnostic utility.
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06-23-2009, 07:50 PM
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I ran the one diagnostic and the hdd has bad sectors. i tried to repair the sector but it didn't work. I am not sure what else to do unless I wipe the disk clean and try and reinstall
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If you change the way you look at things, it will change the way things look. - William Dyer
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06-23-2009, 08:26 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Keeper
I ran the one diagnostic and the hdd has bad sectors. i tried to repair the sector but it didn't work. I am not sure what else to do unless I wipe the disk clean and try and reinstall
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Bad sectors can't really be repaired. The best that can be done is that all bad sectors are marked as unusable. Then you have to hope the drive doesn't develop more bad sectors or some other problem. Wiping and reinstalling isn't a permanent solution since bad drives usually get worse over time and odds are that even if reloading Windows works temporarily, you'll be be back here in a few month looking for help when it happens again. I'd replace the drive before reloading Windows. |
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06-24-2009, 06:11 AM
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As Escape said, the drive is done, you need to replace it.
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