P
Patricio
Hello,
I upgraded my Vista system drive using Seagate's DiscWizard tool to clone
my old system drive. Everything when ok. Vista was able to boot and re-boot
with no issues. After seeing that everything was fine I used the old system
drive to replace a failing drive on another system (which was the reason
I bought a new drive in the first place).
Because it was a new drive (Seagate 1.5 TB) I decided to run a chkdsk (/f
/r) to make sure everything was ok. The chkdsk took forever so that I left
it running overnight. When I saw the system the next day it was stuck in
a black screen with the mouse functional. I rebooted the machine with the
reset button (ctrl-alt-del will not do it) and the system failed to reboot
(no boot manager error). With my Vista DVD I did the startup repair and
then it staterd to re-boot normally. After the bios screens I got the small
green progress bar as usual and the the screen turned black and changed resolution
(as usual). After a while the mouse pointer will appear and then all HDD
activity would stop (just a flash every 10 or 20 seconds with no clear pattern).
I lefted several hours and the black screen with the fuctional mouse pointer
stayed the same. Ctrl-alt-del or alt-tab would not do anything.
I tried to re-boot it several times and I got the same results. Booting
in safe mode will do the same but staying in low resolution. The startup
repair said that everything was ok. I ran chkdsk /f /r and it reported 13
bad sector on free clusters. Yes, I will have to exchange the drive. But
before that I would like to reboot my Vista install and make it functional
so that I can put it on a new drive. A clean install is my last option because
I don't have the time to setup my system from scratch (yes, I know I should
have backed-up the whole system if it was so important. But to my defense
I am waiting for the new versions of WHS system so that I can backup my systems.)
My user data is safe and backed-up.
I tried all the startup modes with no diferent results: safe modes, low resolution,
debug, disabling signature checking, last know configuration, etc. The boot
log showed that the last driver to load was the nvoclock.sys (NVidia utility)
so that I think it could be video-driver related. I renamed the driver and
rebooted with the same results. System restore reports no restore points.
I know I had restore points before.
Serching the net gives many other people with the same issue. Some of them
said it is a video driver issue, others said that it is a virtual drive driver,
etc. (http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/747332.htm, http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2805226&SiteID=17).
I wanted to do an install-upgrade of Vista but I can't do that booting from
the DVD (I have the Vista DVD with SP1) because the option is grayed out
with a message saying that I need to run the Setup from witihn Vista to do
the upgrade.
I also tried the System File Checker (SFC) but it does not run from the Recovery
Command Prompt. Error is "Windows Resource Protection could not start the
repair service".
Concrete questions:
1. Is there a way to run the SFC from the Recovery Command Prompt? Could
this fix my issue. Or,
2. can I do/force/hack a install-upgrade booting from the Vista DVD. Or,
3. can I uninstall/disable the NVidia video driver from the Recovery Command
Prompt so that the system uses the default video driver? Or,
4. I read a comment about doing a parallel Vista installation. Could that
help me to recover the current install? Or,
5. any ideas you can think of?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Regards,
Patricio.
I upgraded my Vista system drive using Seagate's DiscWizard tool to clone
my old system drive. Everything when ok. Vista was able to boot and re-boot
with no issues. After seeing that everything was fine I used the old system
drive to replace a failing drive on another system (which was the reason
I bought a new drive in the first place).
Because it was a new drive (Seagate 1.5 TB) I decided to run a chkdsk (/f
/r) to make sure everything was ok. The chkdsk took forever so that I left
it running overnight. When I saw the system the next day it was stuck in
a black screen with the mouse functional. I rebooted the machine with the
reset button (ctrl-alt-del will not do it) and the system failed to reboot
(no boot manager error). With my Vista DVD I did the startup repair and
then it staterd to re-boot normally. After the bios screens I got the small
green progress bar as usual and the the screen turned black and changed resolution
(as usual). After a while the mouse pointer will appear and then all HDD
activity would stop (just a flash every 10 or 20 seconds with no clear pattern).
I lefted several hours and the black screen with the fuctional mouse pointer
stayed the same. Ctrl-alt-del or alt-tab would not do anything.
I tried to re-boot it several times and I got the same results. Booting
in safe mode will do the same but staying in low resolution. The startup
repair said that everything was ok. I ran chkdsk /f /r and it reported 13
bad sector on free clusters. Yes, I will have to exchange the drive. But
before that I would like to reboot my Vista install and make it functional
so that I can put it on a new drive. A clean install is my last option because
I don't have the time to setup my system from scratch (yes, I know I should
have backed-up the whole system if it was so important. But to my defense
I am waiting for the new versions of WHS system so that I can backup my systems.)
My user data is safe and backed-up.
I tried all the startup modes with no diferent results: safe modes, low resolution,
debug, disabling signature checking, last know configuration, etc. The boot
log showed that the last driver to load was the nvoclock.sys (NVidia utility)
so that I think it could be video-driver related. I renamed the driver and
rebooted with the same results. System restore reports no restore points.
I know I had restore points before.
Serching the net gives many other people with the same issue. Some of them
said it is a video driver issue, others said that it is a virtual drive driver,
etc. (http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/747332.htm, http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2805226&SiteID=17).
I wanted to do an install-upgrade of Vista but I can't do that booting from
the DVD (I have the Vista DVD with SP1) because the option is grayed out
with a message saying that I need to run the Setup from witihn Vista to do
the upgrade.
I also tried the System File Checker (SFC) but it does not run from the Recovery
Command Prompt. Error is "Windows Resource Protection could not start the
repair service".
Concrete questions:
1. Is there a way to run the SFC from the Recovery Command Prompt? Could
this fix my issue. Or,
2. can I do/force/hack a install-upgrade booting from the Vista DVD. Or,
3. can I uninstall/disable the NVidia video driver from the Recovery Command
Prompt so that the system uses the default video driver? Or,
4. I read a comment about doing a parallel Vista installation. Could that
help me to recover the current install? Or,
5. any ideas you can think of?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Regards,
Patricio.