Vista upgrade killed my computer?

[John R Rybock]

Maybe "killed" is too strong a term, but it is how I'm feeling.

I have an HP a1210n computer with XP Media Center. I tried to install
the Vista Home Premium upgrade. Now, during boot, I get the blue
screen of death. [I get a 0x0000007e error, followed with a bunch of
other codes, but the memory dump and restart take about 1 second, so
I've had a hard time getting them down). It does this in all start up
options (Safe, Safe with Network, Safe with command prompt, etc...),
and when it shows the drivers the last it gets to is crcdisk.sys.

Right now, I am trying to run Startup Repair off of the Vista disk. It
ran a couple of times, didn't work. Right now it is running. The
computer (mainly HD), appears to work for 2-3 minutes, then there is
no sign of life other than the blue meter moving on the screen. It has
run close to 2 hours now with no sign of progress.

What really has me worried is that in the menu of options, when I go
to command prompt, I don't see what used to be my C: drive. Windows
appears on the D: drive but that looks like my installed D: drive,
which was used for some data. I also can't find the old E: drive, a
partition HP included with recovery utilities and data.

Any help is appreciated. I've been scanning the web and groups for
info. I've stripped out graphics cards, unplugged USB devices, etc...
as some have suggested and no result. I'd like to avoid installing XP
again cleanly, and trying again (I have a disk for XP Home from my old
computer, the Media Center should have been on the other partition).

John

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

John;
Did you run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor before starting:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx
It is an advisor as the name suggests, not a silver bullet.
You still need to verify Windows Vista compatibility with your
essential hardware and software.

Blue screen errors are usually driver related.

What happens if you disconnect the cables from all drives except what
should be the drive Windows is installed?

Assuming Windows Vista is upgrade media, you may need to perform an
install of Windows XP followed by an upgrade to Windows Vista.

Is all your essential data already backed up?

 

[William Pierce]

Try going into setup, either F8 or F10 when you boot up, and checking your
settings. There should be a setting in there somewhere that tells the
computer to restart when errors are encountered. You can disable this
option. I had to do it on my Dell when I started BSOD and couldn't get all
the info before it restarted. Once you change the setting, and are able to
get all the info, it should be pretty easy to fix your problem.

Will