Vista SP1 has crippled my PC!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andy G
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Andy G

Going round and round in circles, all support sources useless so far. Any
help would be really appreciated.

3 Days ago I had a Compaq notebook (6720s) that was working OK, although USB
functionality was pretty random.

Then I tried to install Vista SP1 as offered by Windows Update. The install
failed. 2 different System Restore points also fail.... Terrific.

System no longer shows DVD drive in My Computer or Computer Management, but
it shows in Device Manager as not working, no drivers. My printer (USB), no
longer works, nor my external hard drive, (USB), nor apparently anything on
a USB port. Everything else seems OK, apart from System Restore of course.

I've tried the Filters fix that everyone seems to suggest. No good.

Microsoft will not give me their much-trumpeted free support on SP1 as my
Windows (Home Basic), is OEM. Hewlett Packard just suggest doing a system
restore using F11 on start up. Tried that, and guess what, no restore
points shown....

Catch 22, 44, and 66 as far as I can see.

No idea where to go next. I've tried some other stuff, but if anyone can
give me a steer to at least try thinking about other directions.

Thanks in advance.

Andy
 
Microsoft will not give me their much-trumpeted free support on SP1 as my
Windows (Home Basic), is OEM. Hewlett Packard just suggest doing a system
restore using F11 on start up. Tried that, and guess what, no restore
points shown....
Click to expand...

I believe that HP was telling you to run System RECOVERY which takes
your computer back to the same condition it was in when you took it
out of the box.

If you hit F11 and weren't offered that option... did you delete the D
partition that was on the computer when you bought it? Did you ever
make recovery discs from it?
 
DDW said:
I believe that HP was telling you to run System RECOVERY which takes
your computer back to the same condition it was in when you took it
out of the box.

If you hit F11 and weren't offered that option... did you delete the D
partition that was on the computer when you bought it? Did you ever
make recovery discs from it?
Click to expand...


There is a 'switch' in BIOS which allows F11 to access the recovery
partition.. seems like an over the top way to fix USB probs though..


--
Mike Hall - MVP
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Not sure whether we are talking about the same thing. I understood that HP
were suggesting some sort of recovery process that emulated MS System
Restore. And it looked exactly like that. A "table" that appeared to offer
a choice of restore points except it was not populated with any choices....

To answer your other questions. No I did not delete the D partition, and
Yes I made recovery disks. If I can use the recovery disks; my drive is
not recognised, remember, will that not lose all my installed apps etc etc.
and take me back to Day 1? Not sure I want to do that if I can avoid it.

Andy
 
YES, you lose everything!
To go that path, go into BIOS(setup) at computer power on, hit F2 or
DELETE(it will tell you which Key at bottom of screen), set DVD Drive to be
1st in Boot Order, have disk inserted in drive; reboot, reinstall Vista
 
Not sure whether we are talking about the same thing. I understood that HP
were suggesting some sort of recovery process that emulated MS System
Restore. And it looked exactly like that. A "table" that appeared to offer
a choice of restore points except it was not populated with any choices....
Click to expand...

Welp... I think you said that none of those options worked, right?
To answer your other questions. No I did not delete the D partition, and
Yes I made recovery disks. If I can use the recovery disks; my drive is
not recognised, remember, will that not lose all my installed apps etc etc.
and take me back to Day 1? Not sure I want to do that if I can avoid it.
Click to expand...

Like Mick said: set your BIOS to boot from the CD/DVD drive first,
boot to your recovery DVD and then initiate a complete recovery.

You might beg/borrow/steal an external drive to copy all of your
important files to before performing that totally destructive
operation.

And you might give some serious thought about getting backup software
- such as Acronis True Image - and instituting a frequent and
consistetn backup schedule.
 
Guys

Thanks for your constructive, but somewhat scary suggestions. I may have to
go that route, but I really want to exhaust other options first, unless my
problem sounds to you as though there is no other solution?

Bit confused about DDW's point re backing up to an external drive. I think
I mentioned in my original post that I already have an external drive, which
the system no longer "sees". And, yes, I already use Acronis, but of
course, I cannot get to my archives....

Seems like Microsoft got me every way I turn. I wouldn't mind so much if
they didn't give you all that bull about only offering you updates that are
suitable for your PC, implication = are not going to totally screw you
up....

Andy
 
Yeah, I did that, but I couldn't actually see a driver for the DVD drive
hardware or for USB support. Any chance you could suggest which driver I
need?

Also, the machine was only bought in February of this year, and a lot of the
drivers pre-date that so I'm assuming I already have them.

Thanks

Andy
 
The vendor's older drivers may be better than a generic up-to-date MS
driver.

I don't know exactly which model of 6720 you are using.
But, apparently there is a BIOS update 19Jun08 that may apply. I'd start
there.
 
Thanks Mark, I really didn't want to hear that older drivers may be better
than new ones, but I can see where you are coming from. It's a 6720s.

I had already installed the BIOS update. Since my last post I also
installed some of the HP Vista update files. Guess I should have done that
before trying SP1. (It's really not that obvious though to ordinary people
who just want to use a computer..... All got much too complicated.)

But I now have my USB hub working and therefore I have a printer, and also
an external hard drive that shows in Device Manager, and Disk Management but
without a drive letter, and so cannot be seen by Windows Explorer etc. I
guess it's progress.

Still no sign of a working DVD drive. It shows in Device Manager, but says
driver could not be loaded. How do I force system to choose cdrom.sys as
the driver? It keeps trying to use one of the burning software drivers
instead.

Anyway, thanks for the previous suggestion about downloading drivers from HP
website. It's got me moving anyway, although I despair about the DVD drive.

Andy
 
Yes, OEM products usually comes at a price not understood by most consumers.
The vendor's answer is almost always: Recovery. The data lost is not theirs
and they are not concerned about it. And, older drivers are not always
better, but vendor's drivers are almost always better than MS's generic
drivers, even if they are older.

So,
At this point, you have two directions to proceed:
1. Uninstall SP1. This may prove to be difficult, but well worth a shot and
if it restores your capabilities, you can save all your data and start
clean.
2. Download and install all the available drivers and updates from HP for
the 6720s. Each will create restore points and each can be rolled back if it
causes a problem. But, you will know that it has been "re-aligned" back to
HP's original configuration.

Other questions:
Does BIOS see the DVD drive?

Does this DVD drive use LightScribe?
If so, uninstall LightScribe. Reboot.
If Device Manager can now see the DVD drive, that should at least give
you some backup capabilities.
You can try re-installing LightScribe later.

Did your external USB drive come with an installation disk? Most likely not,
but some do.
Does a flash stick work? (Does it get assigned a drive letter?)
 
Agree with you about vendor attitudes. Note the point about generic
drivers!

I'm going to start with your last two points re BIOS and LightScribe and see
if I get any joy. Will post re results.

To answer the other two points. The external drive (WD MyBook 250 Gb) does
not apparently need drivers, so no CD. It installed just fine with XP on a
previous machine, and worked with no problems.

A flash drive, HP's own product!, does not show up at all, although it
worked fine on a previous HP machine running XP. System tries to load
drivers and gives message along lines of "found driver but encountered
problem when installing. This operation needs an interactive window
station". Which means nothing to me.

I feel like I'm drowning....

Cheers for now.

Andy
 
Late to this thread... but I've got an HP on which I also tried to go back
to a prior restore point, and none showed up. There are 2 ways to restore, I
believe the "normal" one uses HP's restore, not Windows restore, and
therefore there is no list of restore points. I finally figured this out
after I managed to get into Windows restore--NOT HP's restore. Can't
remember what F-key it was, but you might want to try that...?
 
Hi Marc

Thanks for that. Are you saying there is another Windows Restore that you
get to while booting up?

to be honest, I'm now making enough progress that after all the updates and
new drivers, I'm not sure I want to restore any more.....

Any ideas on how to force system to choose a particular driver file for the
DVD?

Andy
 
Hi Mark

Yes, it does use LightScribe, but the program does not show up in the list
of installed programs, nor does it have an uninstall option on the Start
menu entry!! How do I get rid of it? Would it be a bad move to just delete
the directories. I'm never likely to use it by the way, perhaps I can just
disable it in some way?

Any ideas?

Andy
 
This could be a bad install of LightScribe, or it is not actually installed.
Either could affect the presence of your DVD drive.
It is usually bad to simply delete directories as the registry entries are
still present and will be looking for things that are no longer there and
other files will be orphaned that may try to run.

Better to install the device with the HP driver/software. See if that cleans
up this particular problem by giving your DVD back. If not, then use the
uninstall that will now be present in Control Panel to cleanup more
correctly.
 
I would not be surprised if it were a bad install of LightScribe.

What exactly did you mean by " install the device with the HP driver"?

Andy
 
For future reference then...

I think the Windows restore is a menu option if you boot into safe mode
(what is that, F2?), and there is a different F-key you press to get into
the HP restore menu... I'd have to look them up--just don't remember.

But once I got into the Windows restore, I had several restore points that
showed up...
 
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