Vista won't boot. Do I need Full Install or will upgrade do?

[rckelly6]

I have an hp desktop that came with vista home premium preinstalled. It will
not boot up now. So I tried the emrgency recovery disks that I was told to
createwhen I first got the computer and they didn't work. I thought I would
have to boot from windows vista disks to repair this. No Vista disks came
with the computer. My question is can I buy the upgrade SP1 disk to both
improve the system and resolve the boot problem or am I forced to get the
Full system

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Neither. A retail disk would simply be a new copy of Vista without the HP
drivers and utilities. It could not be used in conjuction with the
preinstalled copy of Vista (product would not work).

Investigate why you cannot use the disk you have. You do not say what
happens when you do try to use the recovery disk so no one can do more than
guess.

Make sure that the dvd drive is ahead of the hard drive in the Boot Order in
the BIOS (should be).

The HP recovery partition on the hard drive is used by pressing F11 during
system start up. Have you tried that?

 

[Nonny]

I have an hp desktop that came with vista home premium preinstalled. It will
not boot up now. So I tried the emrgency recovery disks that I was told to
createwhen I first got the computer and they didn't work.

What do you mean by "they didn't work"?

I thought I would
have to boot from windows vista disks to repair this. No Vista disks came
with the computer.

That's what your recovery disks are for. Is your BIOS set to boot
from your CD/DVD drive first??

 

[rckelly6]

Thanks for responding.Here is what happened.
I tried to install ubuntu 8.04 (linux) on an external USB drive. I thought I
had everything backed up including the recovery disks that I created soon
after getting the machine ( an hp pavillion s7700n desktop. But apparently
the ubuntu modified the Vista boot image. What happened when I turned back on
the computer is that the linux bootloader program Grub displays Stage 1.5
error 17 (sometimes it comes up with error 21).

What I believe I need to do is reconstruct the MBR. Iwas hoping to do this
with an Vista OS disc. I have a legitimate Vista Home Premium OS
(preinstalled). I don't want to but the Full system, but what I have isn't
working.

When I try to use the recovery disk It begins to load and displays the
message "Windows is loading files.." After a few moments it switches to a
blue screen then displays the message
"Error
This PC is not supported by the systemrecovery discs.
You will not not be able to recover this system with these discs. "
When I press F11 I get BIOS setup
When I press F10 it boots from the recovery disk.
Boot order is set at DVD then HDD

Help!!!!!

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Simply contact HP and ask for an MBR repair tool. I remember discussions of
both HP and Dell having these tools back when folks were messing things up
royally during the Vista beta. You should be fine.

Have you considered running Ubuntu in a VMWare virtual machine?

 

[Malke]

Thanks for responding.Here is what happened.
I tried to install ubuntu 8.04 (linux) on an external USB drive. I thought
I had everything backed up including the recovery disks that I created
soon after getting the machine ( an hp pavillion s7700n desktop. But
apparently the ubuntu modified the Vista boot image. What happened when I
turned back on the computer is that the linux bootloader program Grub
displays Stage 1.5 error 17 (sometimes it comes up with error 21).

What I believe I need to do is reconstruct the MBR. Iwas hoping to do this
with an Vista OS disc. I have a legitimate Vista Home Premium OS
(preinstalled). I don't want to but the Full system, but what I have isn't
working.

When I try to use the recovery disk It begins to load and displays the
message "Windows is loading files.." After a few moments it switches to a
blue screen then displays the message
"Error
This PC is not supported by the systemrecovery discs.
You will not not be able to recover this system with these discs. "
When I press F11 I get BIOS setup
When I press F10 it boots from the recovery disk.
Boot order is set at DVD then HDD

You need to run the startup repair from a real Vista install disk. Instead
of buying one, try this:

For people who only have a restore image - Windows Vista Recovery Disc
Download:

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/

You'll need to burn this as an image, not as data, using third-party burning
software.

Malke

 

[rckelly6]

Simply contact HP and ask for an MBR repair tool. I remember discussions of
both HP and Dell having these tools back when folks were messing things up
royally during the Vista beta. You should be fine.

Have you considered running Ubuntu in a VMWare virtual machine?

 

[rckelly6]

I got the right recovery disk from neosmart. This didn't solve my problems
but it allowed me to do dos commands from the C drive so I could fix the
MBR.
Thanks!

 

[rckelly6]

I prefer the ubuntu but what is a VMWare virtual machine? I think I still
want to boot linux from a hard drive. The Live is much too slow?
Rich K