Re-install windows

[Piff]

Number 2 son's pc is in a mess - lack of maintenance and now beyond the maintenance stage

OS is windows vista home premium 64bit

I haven't done a disk format & reload for a few years, never done it with vista.

What is the proceedure to wipe the hard disk?

 

[wemorgan]

Insert the CD. Reboot PC. It should then boot off it. One of the earlier options will be whether you wish to reformat the hard drive or not.

Installing and reinstalling Windows Vista

Have you backed-up all his data including email, favourites?

 

[Piff]

Insert the CD. Reboot PC. It should then boot off it. One of the earlier options will be whether you wish to reformat the hard drive or not.

Installing and reinstalling Windows Vista

Have you backed-up all his data including email, favourites?

Back up - whats that - haven't you read post 31

About to back up essentials before commencing.
Thanks for the microsoft link

 

[wemorgan]

Ah, sorry to rub salt in the wound.

 

[Piff]

Hmm
We have a problem
Part way through re-installation pc restarts, booting from cd drive again
Screen says
Installing windows...
Thats all the information we need right now. Your computer will restart several times during installation.
Copying files - ticked
Expanding files - ticked
Installing features - ticked
Installing updates - ticked
Completing installation...... and it freezes after about a minute

Done this three times now
Any ideas?

Tried re-booting from hard disk
Please wait while windows continues setting up your computer...

The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install windows click ok to restart the computer and then restart the installation.

This take us back to square one

 

[wemorgan]

Try installing without the network cable (or wifi) on.
That might remove the stage 'installing updates' and take you further along the process.

 

[Piff]

Another thought - number 1 son has a different windows disk - 32 bit Vista. This obviously has a different product key & product ID.
Having paid for the licence for each of the disks, can we install the 32 bit version on both pc's legally?

 

[Piff]

Tyring installing without the network cable (or wifi) on.
That might remove the stage 'installing updates' and take you further along the process.

I'll give that a try.

 

[Piff]

Try installing without the network cable (or wifi) on.
That might remove the stage 'installing updates' and take you further along the process.

Network cable was already disconnected. I don't think it has wireless, but i switched off the route just in case

No difference - still claims to have installed updates & still crashes.

Each time I try, it seems to install an additional version of windows. I wonder it it is pulling the updates off the hard disk?

 

[Piff]

I've now got 4 incomplete versions of vista which it can't repair
Thought I would try to format hard disc.
Got to a command prompt which reads
x:\windows\system32\cmd.exe
then we have
x:\sources

Now my dos memory is bad - I've tried
cd:\c - system can't find path
I've tried format drive:\c - invalid drive specification

Not sure where to go next

 

[grober]

Maybe the boot sector of your disc drive is corrupt? i.e. a hardware rather than a software fault.

 

[Piff]

Maybe the boot sector of your disc drive is corrupt? i.e. a hardware rather than a software fault.

Don't understand - do you mean boot sector of hard disc?

If so, can this be worked around or are we looking at new hard disc

When it re-starts part way through installation - is it running from cd or hard disc?

 

[Piff]

Odd to have 2 hard disc failures in the same house within a few days of each other - or could this be virus related?

 

[Piff]

Hmm - son had already started this process yesterday & got stuck in same position as me.

I just had another thought - I have an old copy of windows 98 with a licence, not being used on any other pc.

Thought I would try to load that instead.

Initially it has told me that the whole hard disk is one partition which is not formatted in ms-dos mode (or something similar - I'm past that page now. It has offered to re-format the hard disk in ms-dos mode and is now 4% through.

I guess it may take a while and it will then install win 98. From there we may be able to upgrade to Vista or use the vista disk to clear 98 & load vista

Watch this space!

 

[wemorgan]

If you do get Win 98 working it might be good to then do a full hard disk scan, as some corrupt sectors could be causing your original issue.

 

[gaz_l]

Win98 will (I believe) only recognise FAT32 partitions, whereas if it was previously running Vista the disk would have been formatted as NTFS.

If you want to effectively wipe the hard drive, and have both a floppy drive and the Win98 boot disk, it's quick and easy. Boot up the machine from the floppy, choose "command prompt" and when the prompt appears, type in the following:

A:\>fdisk /mbr

Then hit the return/enter key. This will wipe the master boot record on the hard drive and it will be in effect as new. You can then try the Vista install again.

Important note: FDISK WILL NOT ASK FOR CONFIRMATION. As soon as you hit the return key, it's a one way journey! Just in case anyone was thinking of trying it..

Cheers,

Gaz

 

[grober]

Don't understand - do you mean boot sector of hard disc?

If so, can this be worked around or are we looking at new hard disc

When it re-starts part way through installation - is it running from cd or hard disc?

The MBR on the first sector of the disc maybe physically damaged or it may have been infected with malware .

How To: Repair And Restore Windows Vista Master Boot Record (MBR) | TomsTricks.Com

 

[Piff]

Win 98 failed
Hard disc format seemed to work, 98 commenced, I left it alone, returned after 10 mins & it had shut down
Tried re-starting but it said that it had previously been shut down incorrectly (or similar)
So it seems that you are right with the boot sector problem

Don't have a floppy drive so is there another option to format as NTFS?

About to eat now but will have a read of Toms Tricks later.

Thanks for the help so far - keep it coming

 

[wemorgan]

If grober's idea does not work, also check to see whether the CPU fan is working OK. If it's faulting it can overheat causing the PC to crash after a few minutes or so.

 

[Piff]

If grober's idea does not work, also check to see whether the CPU fan is working OK. If it's faulting it can overheat causing the PC to crash after a few minutes or so.

Could check that but pc is fairly well cooled, when we built it we fitted 2 case fans.