Vista Won't Start!

[Tony K]

Dell D630, Vista SP1, 2G, 120G.

Vista gets to the point of playing the startup music, then the next page
with the background swooshes appears, it says Windows Vista Ultimate at the
bottom, the wheel spins like it's going to do something. Then the page
flickers and goes back the page I just describe reappears, wheel spinning,
flicker, and the process repeats. It doesnt' get as far as the login page.

When starting in Safe Mode, it gets as far as a screen with the user icons.
I select mine (which has admin rights), the screen flickers, then the login
page reappears. It never gets past the login page.

If I F8 at boot time, I can get to the command prompt, but when I try to run
sfc it says a system repair is pending and the system has to reboot. But that
repair never seems to happen.

Basically, the computer is dead. I cannot login. The machine has SP1
installed and was working fine after that install for several weeks.

This problem began after I noticed that in Outlook 2007 it wouldn't find any
emails when trying a search. I went to the indexing services and asked for a
rebuild of the system file index (as recommended elsewhere to fix that
Outlook problem). After re-booting the computer, the present problems arose.

Months ago I had other problems with this system which required a re-install
of the O.S. Now it looks like maybe I have to do that again. This is
utterly ridiculous. I'm thinking about returning the system to Dell and
demanding a refund of my money. Of course, I know it's not Dell's
fault....it's Microsoft that I blame for this.

Tony

 

[Mark]

Did you try "last Known Good Configuration".

Mark

 

[Tony K]

Yes, with no luck. Also tried several previous restore points without any luck.

Tony

 

[Tony K]

I had forgotten about Windows Home Server and the fact that it has been doing
nightly backups of all the computers in my home. Before re-installing Vista,
I thought I'd give the restore function of WHS a chance. So I booted from the
WHS restore disk. With a wired connection to the server, the system restore
took about 30 minutes. Amazingly, when I restarted the computer, Vista
started normally. Sfc /scannow showed now errors. All Windows services are
working. I am shocked that I did not have to spend hours and hours
reinstalling the O.S. and other software packages.

Tony

 

[John]

Months ago I had other problems with this system which required a re-install
of the O.S. Now it looks like maybe I have to do that again. This is
utterly ridiculous. I'm thinking about returning the system to Dell and
demanding a refund of my money. Of course, I know it's not Dell's
fault....it's Microsoft that I blame for this.

Ask them to "downgrade" your system to XP. It's a common practice and
you can upgrade back to Vista in the future after SP2.

JS