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Vista dead and Startup Repair Failed. Out of luck?

post #1 of 17
3/12/10 at 7:06pm
Thread Starter 
My Vista tale is told here:
Vista Startup Repair Unsuccessful. NOW what?

Basically, my Vista OS is corrupted, and even Startup Repair using original Vista OS DVD is not fixing the problem.

Before I decide to wipe it clean and clean install, is there any other way?

What would happen if I bought a Vista->Win7 upgrade disk and attempted that with corrupt, unfixable Vista OS?
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post #2 of 17
3/12/10 at 7:12pm
Could be a dying HDD, I'd get a USB enclosure and transfer what data you can to another PC.
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post #3 of 17
3/12/10 at 8:04pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirosia View Post
Could be a dying HDD, I'd get a USB enclosure and transfer what data you can to another PC.
Called Dell, and my laptop is one month(!) out of 2-year warranty. They wanted $50 for the priviledge of talking to one of their tech people on the phone

BTW, how do I attempt transfer data to USB drive when the computer won't boot, even in Safe Mode?
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post #4 of 17
3/12/10 at 8:05pm
No idea. But you can try removing the hard drive, putting it in a USB enclosure, and transferring the data to another PC.
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post #5 of 17
3/12/10 at 8:45pm
try a repair installation of vista.
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post #6 of 17
3/12/10 at 8:49pm
If you have an external usb harddrive, you can use a bootdisk into another OS to extract your files.
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post #7 of 17
3/12/10 at 9:34pm
If you have a friend with Vista, you can create a bootable USB flashdrive/memory stick and boot from it. You can then backup your hard drive to cd/dvd and then run diagnostics on the hd or reformat and reinstall the OS. Just Google "vista boot usb"
.
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post #8 of 17
3/12/10 at 10:17pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dcpoor View Post
try a repair installation of vista.
Tried that with Vista OS DVD, but no cigar.

I have now taken out Dell's hard drive (WD2500BEVS) and tried connecting it to another laptop (Toshiba) with SATA-to-USB adapter cable I had, and it doesn't get recognized. In fact, my Toshiba freezes until I take off the USB adapter. I tried plugging in the Dell's driv into my TVix media player, and it doesn't get recognized, either.

This leads me to believe the hard drive itself is going bad
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post #9 of 17
3/13/10 at 2:06am
Make sure the USB drive is unplugged, and go into your BIOS and check your boot order. Make sure the internal hard drive is first, or however the order was initially.
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post #10 of 17
3/13/10 at 3:53am
Use an Ubuntu Live CD to access your files and move them to an external device from there imo.
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post #11 of 17
3/13/10 at 12:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon L View Post
Tried that with Vista OS DVD, but no cigar.

I have now taken out Dell's hard drive (WD2500BEVS) and tried connecting it to another laptop ......................and it doesn't get recognized, either.

This leads me to believe the hard drive itself is going bad
Luckily, drives are so cheap nowadays. You can slap another in your laptop and be back in business. Better than a motherboard problem, which usually means the trash (and not the one on your desktop).

If it indeed is the hard disk and you cannot get any of your data off of it, you may want to read the "stiction" article on wikipedia and try whacking your drive hard enough to see if you can free the platters. Out of 5-6 dead drives over the years it's only worked once. The odds are not in your favor, but a 10% chance of getting back the un-backedup part of your data beats a 100% loss. You may also want to retitle the thread so Vista doesn't take the rap for a hardware failure.

Best of Luck.
.
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post #12 of 17
3/13/10 at 1:18pm
Maybe an upgrade to Win 7 could solve the problem. I had many issues with Vista, and when I upgraded, it revamped my computer 100%. Vista was an average OS, and subject to many flaws. Windows 7 is great though, and it shouldn't wipe your hard drive to install. It puts your old files in a separate folder called windows.old (it did for me).
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post #13 of 17
3/13/10 at 1:27pm
I now have Vista for about a year, it crashed one time and I had it repaired right away.

The laptop was upgraded to 3gb Ram and was cleaned up, everything reinstalled. Ever since Vista has never been much of a problem for me. Give cheap PCs 1 gb Ram with Vista and they are sure to crash some time. I'm thinking of going XP and maybe 7.
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post #14 of 17
3/13/10 at 1:50pm
Which operating system do Macintosh users switch to when they have a hard disk crash?
.
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post #15 of 17
3/15/10 at 12:33pm
I used Vistax64 for about a year and had a similar crash. I was able to repair it once by manually rebuilding the boot record, and then it REALLY crashed again about 6 days later. I ordered a Win7x64 disk and installed it to the same hard disk. It actually feels like a real OS, vs. the sloppy Vista. I highly recommend it if you are wanting to stick with Windows.
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