Reinstalling Vista

[kevvyb]

Have a friends PC to fix. Hard drive appears to ahve gone belly up. Cannot read fully, clicking etc.

Have new hard drive and trying to install Vista from the MESH recovery CD is giving odd result.

Install goes fine until reboot. BIOS gives option to 'ESC to boot' but doing so just takes me round again with the previous install of vista being moved to allow for the next install.

Pressing ESC to boot gives another dos command to press any key to boot from CD. This prompts another reinstallation. Trying anythign else just results in DOS disk read error.

I am not inexperienced in reinstalling operation systems. I have tried settign BIOS back to boot from hard drive as MESH advise that disk is not needed for rest of installation process.

Same result.

The new hard drive is partitioned with a GB primary active partition for the system and the rest (400GB or so) a logical partition for data.

I am corresponding on the MESH forum but this is painfully slow as posts cannot be read until moderator has allowed them and they are not coming up with much. BTW there is only 1GB RAM so it's not the 'Vista doesn't install with 2GB RAM or over' issue.

Can anyone give me any pointers? I have searched on web but have not found much but maybe I am searching for the wrong thing.

 

[darroll]

I would call MS.
They won't charge you.

 

[Celegorm]

Wait, are you trying to limit vista to only 1 GB for itself? That's way too small. You need at least 20 for windows to fit comfortable and not complain.

 

[kevvyb]

Darroll

Thansk for that but if I was in the habit iof calling MS I wouldn't use forums such as this.

Thanks again for your reply.

The new hard drive is partitioned with a GB primary active partition for the system and the rest (400GB or so) a logical partition for data.

Typo, 60GB

Wait, are you trying to limit vista to only 1 GB for itself? That's way too small. You need at least 20 for windows to fit comfortable and not complain.

The new hard drive is partitioned with a GB primary active partition for the system and the rest (400GB or so) a logical partition for data.

Typo, 60GB

 

[l1o2l]

Retry reinstalling, this seems like the restore disk hasn't installed a boot loader on the hard drive.

 

[kevvyb]

By this stage in the proceedings I have done about 6-8 reinstalls already trying every permutation of options I can think of. Still no luck.

Win 7 install same result so it is not the MESH installation CD. Could it be hardware related.



Maybe that old keyboard getting in the way....? Something funny is happening with the keyboard indicator lights. Just noticed that even with machine switched off two lights remain on. Something I have not seen before. Am going to plug in my other keyboard and a wired mouse to see if that gets me anywhere.



Am barking totally up the wrong tree...?

UPDATE

Don't believe this! After the unmpteenth reinstall, the machine just booted into windows after the install routine. What do you make of that? Does this implicate the new hard drive...?