T
Tony Tait
Hi all,
I'm on my second try to upgrade my xp pro install to Vista business
(free from the MS 'together' promo) on my Dell Inspiron E1705. When the
install gets to the (I presume) last reboot and tries to 'start for the
first time' I get an immediate BSOD and reboot after the Vista load
screen. The BSOD is much too fast to read the stop code as the machine
reboots instantly. 'A quick flash of blue'.
I'm currently running 'startup repair' from the DVD, but it's been
running for 16 hours already. There is still HD activity going on,
albeit slowly. I chose to upgrade because I thought it would be easier
that re-installing all my apps. I do have a full backup image on a USB
hard drive.
SO: Does anyone know how long Startup Repair takes to finish, or how
long I should wait beforre giving up?
Dell has Vista upgrades on their site and I did upgrade the Bios to A06
that is for Vista compatibility, but some (the chipset and video drivers
in particular) won't install unless you're already running Vista. A
classic catch 22.
So, here I sit, watching the blue bar of startup repair cross the screen
of my laptop.
Any suggestions at all (beside the obvious 'do a clean install') to get
this to complete would be greatly apprecieated.
Thanks for reading.
ADDED:
It's now been about 25 hours that Startup Repair has been running.
My version of Vista is a full install, not an upgrade, but I was hoping
to upgrade in place because of around 80 GB of installed apps, some of
which were upgrades requiring the disks of the previous versions. Who
knows where all those disks are, cuz I don't. (at least quickly)
ADDED again:
OK, I stopped the startup repair. Read the log. No error codes except
the event list did not finish processing. After 30 hours, it was never
going to.
I went into bios and disabled a lot of stuff, and tried to start it in
safe mode with minimal (VGA) resolution. This caused the BSOD to stay on
the screen long enough to read the error code: 0x18 'reference by
pointer'. There is no KB article that I can find that refers to this
error code.
I'm very close to doing a clean install, but I'm stubborn.
I'm in a dos window now and I can see my C: drive and the Dell directory
that has the Vista drivers. (Note to self: next time I extract driver
files, give the folder a meaningful name. R142930 just doesn't cut it. )
So I have to go to the dell vista drivers and downloads site and look at
the drivers to decode what the numbers mean.
BUT!!! If I am successful in loading the vista drivers and they actually
install from a dos prompt, It would be next to impossible to roll back
to XP should the installation still fail.
Is there anything I can do to make this work from the DOS prompt??
A clean install just might be the only answer and spending 2 or 3 days
finding and installing apps might be my fate.
Tony
Dell E1705, T2500, NV 7800 Go, 100GB Sata 5400, 1GB ram, wireles ABG
card and bluetooth.
I'm on my second try to upgrade my xp pro install to Vista business
(free from the MS 'together' promo) on my Dell Inspiron E1705. When the
install gets to the (I presume) last reboot and tries to 'start for the
first time' I get an immediate BSOD and reboot after the Vista load
screen. The BSOD is much too fast to read the stop code as the machine
reboots instantly. 'A quick flash of blue'.
I'm currently running 'startup repair' from the DVD, but it's been
running for 16 hours already. There is still HD activity going on,
albeit slowly. I chose to upgrade because I thought it would be easier
that re-installing all my apps. I do have a full backup image on a USB
hard drive.
SO: Does anyone know how long Startup Repair takes to finish, or how
long I should wait beforre giving up?
Dell has Vista upgrades on their site and I did upgrade the Bios to A06
that is for Vista compatibility, but some (the chipset and video drivers
in particular) won't install unless you're already running Vista. A
classic catch 22.
So, here I sit, watching the blue bar of startup repair cross the screen
of my laptop.
Any suggestions at all (beside the obvious 'do a clean install') to get
this to complete would be greatly apprecieated.
Thanks for reading.
ADDED:
It's now been about 25 hours that Startup Repair has been running.
My version of Vista is a full install, not an upgrade, but I was hoping
to upgrade in place because of around 80 GB of installed apps, some of
which were upgrades requiring the disks of the previous versions. Who
knows where all those disks are, cuz I don't. (at least quickly)
ADDED again:
OK, I stopped the startup repair. Read the log. No error codes except
the event list did not finish processing. After 30 hours, it was never
going to.
I went into bios and disabled a lot of stuff, and tried to start it in
safe mode with minimal (VGA) resolution. This caused the BSOD to stay on
the screen long enough to read the error code: 0x18 'reference by
pointer'. There is no KB article that I can find that refers to this
error code.
I'm very close to doing a clean install, but I'm stubborn.
I'm in a dos window now and I can see my C: drive and the Dell directory
that has the Vista drivers. (Note to self: next time I extract driver
files, give the folder a meaningful name. R142930 just doesn't cut it. )
So I have to go to the dell vista drivers and downloads site and look at
the drivers to decode what the numbers mean.
BUT!!! If I am successful in loading the vista drivers and they actually
install from a dos prompt, It would be next to impossible to roll back
to XP should the installation still fail.
Is there anything I can do to make this work from the DOS prompt??
A clean install just might be the only answer and spending 2 or 3 days
finding and installing apps might be my fate.
Tony
Dell E1705, T2500, NV 7800 Go, 100GB Sata 5400, 1GB ram, wireles ABG
card and bluetooth.