Vista update problems

[}TCP{Snowbird]

Krabbelrichers daughter has a laptop with vista installed on it. I do not know much about vista, but the troubles look about the same as XP and all the rest of the operating systems. His daughter, Viv, was going to shut her computer off yesterday, and it said it had a few updates to download. She clicked on the DL button, and it crashed. I have been working on it for hours, and as it looks, it killed the system volume and the master boot record. Vista uses allot of the same repair software that XP uses, but I could still not get the thing running.

If someone knows something about Vista crashes, it would be nice to get a boost in the right direction.

I am getting old, and am not keeping up with the newer stuff. Time to give up and get a rocking chair out.

Frank

[}TCP{Coco]

Hi!

Uhm, I never heard of updates destroying the MBR or a whole partition! There must have been something going terribly wrong.

But unfortunately, I don't have Vista myself, so I can't help you there, mate...

Coco.

[rejecht]

There are sporadic problems that may accumulate with the Windows Update process, where after installing updates, and after a reboot, the bootfiles have disappeared (and all files at the root level of the boot partition).

Anyway, you can try this (requires the installation media for *that* computer, since you can't start using F8 (NTFS should have a backup of the MBR which may be retrived by the Vista repair process)):
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutoria ... al148.html

It may restore the sytem to an earlier point in time, meaning programs may go missing, but it should never remove user data. I advice you read through it first, of course.

Also: Remove any USB memory sticks/any external storage device, because a BIOS might want to boot off it, and when it can't, it reports Missing operating system or similar.

Have a look here as well:
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3 ... 2&x=8&y=14


(For general memory stability troubleshooting (since you're up to your neck in various computer problems lately), try memtest86+. It's an ISO image you burn to a CD and boot off. It will simply run forever. A 100% pass will take about 1 - 3 hours, usually.)

[}TCP{Snowbird]

thanks guys.

@ reject, both of the articles were very helpful. I figured out how to use the cd to fix the system volume. I am not sure if it wrote a new MBR at that time, but I found out how to do that manually.

The second article would have helped me out more. I could not find all of the commands that vista uses. It is not as friendly as xp. I am sure that the bootrec.exe might get me a bit further, next time. I reinstalled the vista, and it is up and running, but I am glad that I have started learning vista.

Thanks again guys. Frank

[Hyper]

Not specially for Vista, but I can recommend everyone to make a image backup of your primary drive so you can quickly restore it in case of this kind of trouble.

Here I've been using a Symantec Ghost boot floppy to write the full contents of C: to an image file on E:. From time to time I update the image and when I screwed up my Windows of C: drive I just restore it.

[}TCP{Coco]

Hi!

Good help, rejecht, thanks!

@Hyper: Yes, that's what I do as well.

@Feank: It's good that you're learning about Vista. But to be honest: I think Vista will lose most of its importance when Windows 7 is released in November.

Coco.

[}TCP{Snowbird]

From what I have read and now have seen, Vista is nothing but a bunch of make-up. Sure it may have some new things added to it, but all-in-all, it is nothing but Win 3 with a face lift.

I still say that 98 was the best one so far. I enjoy xp, but I think I will never trust a system like I did with the win 98.

Although... vista did install fast. I was surprised. Frank

[Model:PA-215]

just wait 1 month and Windows 7 is out i think then its much beter then Vista

[}TCP{Snowbird]

Thanks Model, but I reinstalled her computer, anad it is running fine now. I just want to know the "reasons" behind these problems, and then in the future, I can fix them.