Constantly Reboots After Install

[FyberOptic]

I decided to try out Vista, and since I had no intention of an upgrade
or even possibly messing up my existing XP install, I decided to do it
in a spare drive I had laying around. So I disconnected my old
drives, popped in the spare 60gb one, and let'er rip.

Well the install went through pretty painlessly. It's actually a
fairly nice installer compared to all the previous ones, I have to
say. I got my user account created, it checked my system performance,
etc etc. Didn't take all that long until I was sitting at the login
screen. Welp, I typed in my password, it gives a message that it's
starting to log in, but then it says "Shutting Down", and reboots.
And reboots. And reboots. Forever.

I can't even get the splash screen, it just reboots almost instantly
and goes back to the initial system startup. The same thing happens
when I reinstalled it all over again. Picking repair in the DVD
options did nothing; it said it was fine. I did a System Restore just
for the heck of it, no difference.

Then I tried using bcdedit from the recovery console and adding in
extra false boot configurations, so that the boot menu might stay up
for some length of time. I even set another one of them to be the
default. But it still constantly reboots. I can tap F8, or hold
shift, or any of the things that used to do something in XP, and still
nothing. I might see a flash of text from the boot loader, and then
reboot.

This is just really frustrating. I don't understand what the deal is,
considering it rebooted two or three times during the install process
just fine. It wasn't until I tried to login that it screwed up. I
even pulled the network cable out the second time I installed it,
because somebody suggested that it might think my copy was stolen or
some such. Made no difference.

Has anyone else experienced such a crazy problem?

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Even if it was an illegal copy, it wouldn't prevent you from installing and
logging in this way. It simply would not activate, and a poorly made copy
would not complete installation. No, I suspect a different problem.

How did you create the system volume? I am thinking perhaps there is a
problem with it. I might suggest you delete all partitions on the drive,
then create a new one as part of Vista setup.

Also, what video adapter is in use?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[FyberOptic]

Thanks for the response. It's nice to know about the first part.
Though it just makes me wonder even more what it could be if that's
not the case.

The first time that I created the volume I definately deleted all
partitions (since there were two), then created a new one, and
formatted, right there in the Vista installer. The second time I
installed, I deleted the one I had created previously, made a new one,
etc.

The video card is an ATI All-In-Wonder 9600XT. I also have some
onboard Intel stuff but it's disabled.

Do you suppose there could be any sort of error logs it created when
it initially shut down that I could go into the drive and view? If
so, I'm curious what they might be called and their location. I have
an IDE to USB adapter that lets me get into the drive fairly easily
from XP without going through more internal drive changery.

I've thought that there could possibly be something wrong with the
drive itself, but it just seems odd that it would make it through the
install without error, and reboot a few times without error, and then
mess up when everything's done. I have an extra drive somewhere I
think, it's just a matter of digging it out. Tis a shame Vista won't
let you install onto a USB drive normally, since I have an 80gb
external, but I guess I can understand the reasons I've read as to
why.

Anyhoo, thanks so far!

 

[FyberOptic]

I dug out an old 8.4gb drive I had and installed it on that, and I
didn't even get to type in my password at the login prompt this time.
As soon as I picked up the keyboard and pressed a key, it went away
and started saying the "Shutting Down" stuff again, before starting
the perpetual reboot.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

The video card should be ok. I suspect that you have some incompatibility
with the system BIOS as you are getting the same failure with another drive.
You might want to see if there is an update available for the motherboard.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[FyberOptic]

Unfortunately, they never released anymore bios updates for this
machine or motherboard. So it looks like I'm pretty much out of luck,
and can't do anything with this copy of Vista. Never had any problems
out of XP though, so I guess I'll be stuck with it for a long time.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

What's the make/model?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[FyberOptic]

Hi,

What's the make/model?

It's an eMachines T3256 from a couple years ago. I believe the
motherboard is a FIC AU31 from what I tried to find out once before.
Uses the nForce2 chipset. I popped in that video card and an extra
512MB of ram and it's served me fine with XP for quite a while now.
I've never even reinstalled XP from the factory install. Removed most
of the junk they packed in with it though of course.

I tossed an email to eMachines' support but I dunno if that will be of
any consequence.

 

[FyberOptic]

Welp, I figured out my boot problem. It wasn't even making it to the
actual Vista loader, it was screwing up at GRUB4DOS. I managed to hit
C and E fast enough while it was starting to get to the GRUB prompt.

From there I just started typing in things, the very first one being

"acpi". This made the machine restart. I started to realize almost
immediately what was wrong. I manually typed in the command necessary
to make Vista boot, and sure enough, it did.

I checked to see what options Vista was using with it by default, and
sure enough, "acpi" was the very first default command. I wasn't sure
if they might have modified it to not use a menu file anymore or not,
but I tried it anyway. I created c:\menu.lst, and put standard GRUB
stuff:

default 0
timeout 0

title Windows Vista
find --set-root /bootmgr
chainloader /bootmgr


And then it booted fine from then on!

Next problem was drivers. Nvidia is really a crappy company, and I
hate that I ever got a machine with an Nforce chipset. I regret it
particularly after discovering that they just so happened to decide
that they weren't going to make Vista drivers for nforce2 OR nforce3.
I mean, what the heck? This computer isn't even three years old, and
those guys aren't even going to support their hardware anymore?
nforce3 computers were sold even more recent than that. And people
try to say ATI's drivers are bad. At least they actually make
drivers. Nvidia only wants to force people to upgrade, either by
doing junk like this with their drivers, or "partnering" with game
companies so that the games will only support the best stuff.
Bioshock, for example, which is covered in Nvidia advertisements, as
early as the installer. Forces people to have shader model 3.0. No
reason whatsoever for that, they just want to make people upgrade
their hardware. What a crappy crappy company.

Anyway, you can force some of the drivers for XP to install, but one
of the most important ones, the GART driver, doesn't work. Neither
did ethernet for me either, actually. I dropped both back down to the
generic Microsoft ones. I got a little bit of 3d support by using the
generic Vista driver for my video card with the generic GART, but that
was obviously slow (although Aero Glass worked). But upon installing
the current ATI drivers, the generic GART driver was no longer
sufficient. I got NO 3d support. And I'm pretty sure that means I'll
never ever get 3d support in Vista with any card, as long as I don't
have a proper GART driver.

So now I either use XP and have a useless copy of Vista, or use Vista
and have a practically useless video card.

I'll never buy another computer with any Nvidia hardware in it.