Perform a system recovery & defrag a personal HD- Have Vista Home

[Walker1]

Hi All, I have an HP PC and upgraded to Vista Home Premium 7 mos. ago. I am
having error & freezing issues lately, but don't know how to do a Vista
system recovery. I only have an UPGRADE disc & was walked through the
original upgrade from XP Home Ed. by a Microsoft tech. When I click on
system recovery I only get an XP message. I only have Vista in my PC and I
can't find any toll for Vista in my PC for a S-Recovery. Somtimes my
explorer 7 freezes also.

Also, I can't get my personal HD to defrag past 48% on this PC or my older
XP O.S. pc. Can someone please give me a hand on these issues. Thanks.

 

[\\/\\/arren]

Vista System Recovery - On boot before the POST ends hit your F8 key several
times. Select the Repair My Computer option then select the option to check
for errors. You will need your Upgrade disk in the drive for this. It will
check against the install disk for errors contained on your hdd.

On the defrag not reaching the end. Several possible problems could cause
this issue. The most common is data corruption on the hdd. Try this one,
Right click the Start Pearl and left click the explore. Find the root of the
drive and right click it. Then left click properties, click the tools tab.
Under Error Checking click the Check Now button. Select both boxes and click
the Start button. It will ask you if you want to run this on the next boot
becuase right now you are running Vista on that drive. Click Yes. Reboot
your machine. BEFORE this step, make sure your mission critical data is
backed up.

The above step will check your hdd for errors and attempt to correct the
problem and recover data, if it can, ergo backups are always important. If
you can't afford to lose a file you should have it on at least two mediums.

I also highly recommend the SpinRite program available from http://grc.com
It is 80 some dollars but has made unbootable disks work for me.

On the IE7 error locking up. A quick guess without a lot of questions Open
IE7, Tools, Internet options, Advanced tab, and click the Reset button.
Sometimes add ons get corrupt or don't work well together. So starting over
is a good place to begin.\

\/\/arren

 

[Walker1]

Thanks, I am not a tech, but I am a fast learner. I'll try what you're
suggesting & let you know the results. One more thing; I forgot to mention
that many times when I want to initiate a restart I click on "restart" and
nothing happens. There is no pattern, but it's been hanging up like this
since I installed Vista on this PC. Are you familier with this issue? Is
there a key(s) that will force a restart? I do get around it by clicking on
"switch users" & in the lower R corner of the page there are options and 1 is
restart. I would rather not have to go through all of that every time I want
a restart. I do leave the PC in the "sleep" mode most of the time when I'm
not using it. Thanks.

 

[Walker1]

Warren, I performed the "check for errors" on the system and there weren't
any. I talked to my PC friend and he said doing a system recovery probably
wouldn't do anything as the error ck. was fine.

On the defrag issue: My 300 GB pers. drive still gets stuck @ 47% when
trying to complete a defrag, but I noticed that all the "red" coloring is
gone and the estimated space after defragging is looking much tighter and is
all blue. I was able to see this using my other PC that has XP Home. My PC
guy also told me that he has had many pers. HD's in for the same reason and
recommended running it all night. He also said if I can't get it defragged
to bring it into his shop & he has software/tools that force it to do so. I
did that on my XP PC as Live One turns it off after a while- I get a message
that says "Your drive was not completely defragged & will be done during
later tuneups." ?? I thought that was done each time Live One does its
tuneup.

Question: Live One defaults to 1 AM for tuneups. My PC guy told me if the
PC is not on a tuneup can't be done. But, when I look at when tha last t-up
& related maint. tasks were performed I see dates and a report if I want it.
Is my guy wrong? I usually put my main PC in the sleep mode when not using
it. Should I reschedule the time for Live One to say- 1 PM during the day
while the PC is on?

The personal PC runs well, but I like everything to be @ 100%. I don't
think I'll be bringing it to a shop & paying $60-75 just to get it defragged
completely. I would transfer all my stuff over to my other pers. HD 1st, and
then "kill" the trouble HD & bury it in the back yard after pounding a few
nails through it. Heck, the darn things are so cheap it doesn't pay to spend
$$ on them.

Thanks for your help! Now I know how to work on Vista by following your
instructions. Let me know your thoughts on the pers. HD.
Have a 2005 HP Desktop Media Center PC.