Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: Jay w on 09 April 2007, 22:28:53
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i'm in the process of upgrading the pc from XP to vista.
Run the discs no problem, however when i boot up it will not boot into vista, all i get is a black screen, i can access the boot menu and the bios.
i am hacked off as i risk losing a lot of info, set a system resore point before i did all of this, all i want to do now is to be able to boot it up in safe mode and restore the point and so roll back to XP.....
any ideas on how i do this, i have tried holding down F6 but nothing happens apart from a load of beeeeeeeps
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... I believe it's F8...
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cheers mate........
this bloody Vista is a nightmare, may as well chuck it in the bin and get a Mac
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I installed Vista on 3 PCs over the last few weeks, they were all bog-standard HPs (i.e. no third-party bits installed in them) albeit different models, and had no problems, I suspect that the problems arise when you mix parts from different vendors e.g. SATA controller etc....
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didnt back up important info before upgrade..?
is vista expensive? my computer is less than a year old on XP and i considered a vista upgrade when it was released, but not sure what difference it would make!
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Mine is a factory built unit, aside from the wireless card has never been messed with.
it was running XP SP2 before, according to the specs it could run vista with no issues as well.
the install went smoothly enough, the first boot up it came up with the all the profiles on the PC and then crashed, i can access safe mode, all i get now is a load os script like this
multi(0)disc(0)rdisc(0)partition(1)\windows\system32\DRIVERS\**********
** = filemnames
it scrolls about 50/60 of these, comes to a rest and the does nothing.
is there anyway i can restore it back to XP?
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And that is why you never, ever, ever upgrade an OS. You always burn and build.
And you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do it without backups.
Not worth fixing, reinstall from scratch.
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Presumably you have just bought it? Ring MS for help.
If it is an OEM copy (unlikely unless very new PC), contact vendor.
If its an illegal copy, well.....
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And that is why you never, ever, ever upgrade an OS. You always burn and build.
And you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do it without backups.
Not worth fixing, reinstall from scratch.
no it is worth it.......you see all my years books and figures for the business are on that hard drive, not to mention all my music..........
was it dear, no i bought it from Ebuyer.com
illegal.......experiece has taught me nothing comes for free
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And that is why you never, ever, ever upgrade an OS. You always burn and build.
And you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do it without backups.
Not worth fixing, reinstall from scratch.
no it is worth it.......you see all my years books and figures for the business are on that hard drive, not to mention all my music..........
was it dear, no i bought it from Ebuyer.com
illegal.......experiece has taught me nothing comes for free
Was it an OEM copy or retail?
Sorry, not seen enough problems with Vista yet to be able to sort out.
If its not retail, usual easy recovery method is to install the OS on another drive, and copy the data off that way.
As said earlier, if it is retail, ring MS...
Why on earth did you attempt an upgrade, and why do it without a backup? Thats brave.
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its a retail copy, so off to MS i suppose.....
why upgrade? i have just bought a laptop for business, looking at some of the features Vista offer if all the PCs on the network are vista it seemed like a good idea at the time......
as for the back up.....we live and learn, i thought a restore point would be good enough, having bought gen kit you dont really expect this to happen......however i will know for the next time
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its a retail copy, so off to MS i suppose.....
why upgrade? i have just bought a laptop for business, looking at some of the features Vista offer if all the PCs on the network are vista it seemed like a good idea at the time......
as for the back up.....we live and learn, i thought a restore point would be good enough, having bought gen kit you dont really expect this to happen......however i will know for the next time
Not why upgrade to Vista (thats a seperate debate ;)), but why do 'upgrade' option. Never upgrade an OS, its a too fundamental change. Also format and reinstall, thats what I meant.
A restore point will never be good enough, thats not what system restore is about. System restore does not back up data.
Live and learn though.
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Do you have a 2nd HDD to install an OS onto to copy off data?
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Never upgrade an OS, its a too fundamental change. Also format and reinstall....
Indeed! Always a fresh install... preferably on another hard drive (a but tricky with laptops though, but not impossible)
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Do you have a 2nd HDD to install an OS onto to copy off data?
It's a laptop... he'll need one of the 2.5"-3.5" adapters or a USB ghost/clone kits... :(
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oh well, looks like i m getting the restore disks out and putting in some serious hours getting the books back in order then......
bugger >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(
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Do you have a 2nd HDD to install an OS onto to copy off data?
It's a laptop... he'll need one of the 2.5"-3.5" adapters or a USB ghost/clone kits... :(
Or boot it from a CD that gives network access (and if required NTFS read ability) ;)
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jay w, for around a Fiver you can get an adaptor that will allow you to connect your laptop's hard disk in a normal desktop PC. Get the adapter, take out the laptop drive, copy all the data to the desktop, then put the drive back in the laptop and give it a clean Vista install including re-format...
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its a desktop, all i have is the restore discs that came with it when i bought it.
I have a standalone hard disk unit and the new laptop
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Do you have a 2nd HDD to install an OS onto to copy off data?
It's a laptop... he'll need one of the 2.5"-3.5" adapters or a USB ghost/clone kits... :(
Or boot it from a CD that gives network access (and if required NTFS read ability) ;)
Bart's PE boot CD.... ;)
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Do you have a 2nd HDD to install an OS onto to copy off data?
It's a laptop... he'll need one of the 2.5"-3.5" adapters or a USB ghost/clone kits... :(
Or boot it from a CD that gives network access (and if required NTFS read ability) ;)
Bart's PE boot CD.... ;)
Universal Network Boot disk and NTFSDos ;)
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well - you have to bear in mind that hard drives are a mechanical item with fancy electronic parts. At the end of the day, all mechanical parts fail eventually. That's not considering less frequent occurences like power surges which can kill electronics (eg the board on the hard drive). If you have no backup then you are taking a big risk if the data on the drive is valuable!
Ideally you should back up the entire PC to a seperate hard drive - external drives are cheap enough nowadays, you could back up your entire drive to one of those and disconnect it when not in use.
A virus can't infect a disk that's not connected ...
Failing that, just back up the important data, you might even want to back that up to (decent quality) DVDs as well to make sure.
And as TheBoy said - and many years working on PCs for a living a few years ago confirmed - forget upgrading something as fundamental as an operating system. The phrase in this case being "Feet of clay" - when you've been running a PC for a while it's had software installed and removed, files updated, all sorts of settings changed from standard - so an upgrade can work on one system but be very unstable on another - essentially there's no real way of knowing what condition the system was in before the upgrade. A clean installation (ie, back up all files and data, wipe hard drive and start all over again) is the only way to be certain as then you are going from a known good starting point ... it's a pain to do, but unfortunately experience (unless you get lucky) tends to show it's the only way.
It's a bit like using pattern cam cover gaskets on the omega instead of genuine Vx - as you said, live & learn ::)
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Another thing worth considering in future....is to put the OS on one partition and your data on another.
I do this.....ie my laptop has a 10Gb partition for XP and a 40GB partition for all apps and my data.
Advantage of doing it this way is if the OS dies.....like XP did a week ago on my laptop.....its easy to format the OS partition and re-install the OS.....leaving the apps/data partition untouched :y
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i'm in the process of upgrading the pc from XP to vista.
It is a downgrade, why do you want to install all the MS spyware and DRM rubbish?
My next PC will still be XP Pro
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didnt back up important info before upgrade..?
is vista expensive? my computer is less than a year old on XP and i considered a vista upgrade when it was released, but not sure what difference it would make!
Advantages Direct X 10, looks nice.
Disadvantages More MS Spy Ware, lot more DRM stuff.
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didnt back up important info before upgrade..?
is vista expensive? my computer is less than a year old on XP and i considered a vista upgrade when it was released, but not sure what difference it would make!
Advantages Direct X 10, looks nice.
Disadvantages More MS Spy Ware, lot more DRM stuff.
That shows a lack of understanding. Vista's DRM has moved from media player etc into OS core. Remember, its not MS who decide how the DRM is used, MS simply supply the foundation, which is far better than your beloved Sony trying to retrofit using poorly coded rookits ;)
Much of the scares touted about in popularist computer press are written by 'journalists' again with no understanding. Read the proper trade press ;). Or as a programmer, read the sdk and ddks ;)
Saying that, for the consumer, there is not much new in Vista, except better security/resilience. Its for the corporates where Vista really shines (in same way as XP Home wasn't a big upgrade from w2k - all the upgrades were in Pro (and only come into play when connected to AD))
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Another thing worth considering in future....is to put the OS on one partition and your data on another.
I do this.....ie my laptop has a 10Gb partition for XP and a 40GB partition for all apps and my data.
Advantage of doing it this way is if the OS dies.....like XP did a week ago on my laptop.....its easy to format the OS partition and re-install the OS.....leaving the apps/data partition untouched :y
Apps will probably still need reinstalling ;)
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Visa also eats resources, need minimum of 1GB Ram, 128Mb graphics card (for the direct x desktop)
Many business will not upgrade until at least SP1 is released for it, and as pointed out there is nothing really for the consumer... XP Pro is a fine OS for home / small business use.
I won't be upgrading until i get the O/S with a new PC....
As for your problem Jay... I suggest:
Remove the hard disc from you PC and buy a external case for i (eBay for around £5/£10)t. This will turn it into a USB external drive, plug it in your laptop and then you should be able to see all the files, copy essentials across and put the HD back in the PC, re-formatt and away you go...
If you run out of space on the laptop, buy an external hard drive. eBuyer is good, can get a 320GB one for around £60... they are also useful for backups, i have a program that runs every night at 10pm and backups up MyDocuments to my other external hard drive.
They are also useful when re-formatting, as a complete copy of everything is on the external hard drives ;) I have 4 of them, all "Western Digital MyBooks" 2 x 320Gb & 2 x 250Gb"