I’ve a Vista Ultimate installed on a DELL Latitude D620 laptop. The
problem
started a few weeks ago when Symantec Antivirus reported catching
Clone War
(1) on my computer. I’ve since done a few clean scans using various
scanning
programs but some system files seems to have been lost or are
corrupted. I
tried running sfc /scannow under admin cmd window and also after
starting
the recovery cmd window, but got the same message both time:
Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested
operation.
Even the automated recovery option to fix boot problem failed. I’m
able to
boot up the windows and its generally funtinal but quite a few
things are not
working e.g. I can’t open the personalize window from the desktop
right click
menu.
Unitl late last week I was able to run the sfc and it reported a
whole bunch
of problems but did not automatically fix anything. I didn't have
time to
look into manually fixing things but now even that's not working.
Please help!
If you are sure the system is clean, the quickest solution might be
a repair install of Vista.
I'm unsure of what you mean here. How do you do a repair install of
Vista? An in place upgrade that was available in XP was not carried
over to Vista.
--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]
If you start the Vista DVD while in Vista, begin the installation,you
will be offered the ability to "upgrade". An upgrade over a current
install of Vista has the same effect as a repair install in XP in that
it will install Vista while keeping intact your documents, settings
and programs.
Jim have you actually done that? I read one report where it didn't
work. But that was a long time ago, I don't recollect the context, but
they had problems with the installation after trying it. I have not
seen any definitive information on this process.
Chad Harris also has mentioned this in a recent post and I have a query
to him about it. Thanks for following up on the question.
I have actually done this on two computers running Vista Ultimate and it
worked just like a repair install in XP. I did use a full version of
Vista if that makes a difference. I'm glad I didn't read that this
didn't work or I might not have tried it.
Jim what problems where these systems having that prompted you to try
this? And the reinstall helped? Had you tried the other recovery
mechanisms including system restore and startup repair? Data and
applications were retained, is that right?
Rock,
On one system I could not get Media Center to launch and I could not get
the Search Indexer to work. It was a clean install on a box I built for
Vista. Other than the Media Center and Search issues, the system was
stable and fast and every feature and app worked perfectly. My best guess
is that on this system either the chipset drivers or raid drivers (
updated for Vista compatibility about 2 months after initial install)
might have caused a less than perfect install. The repair install
corrected the two issues I was having.
The second system ( not mine ) is a little more interesting. The original
complaint was Internet Explorer was hanging and the mail database
disappeared from Outlook 2007.
Here's what I found - IE asking to be the default browser when no other
browsers were present, screen saver failure, poor performance, slow boot,
occasional lock up, no system restore points, and ( seperate issue ) a
corrupt Business Contact Manager database. The bottom line was a lot of
apps were added and some removed and I wasn't ever going to get the full
story. So, I uninstalled the apps I thought didn't belong, did a virus and
malware scan ( no malware found), did a repair install of Vista. The
computer now works perfectly ( fixed the Outlook issue seperately). No
data or settings were lost and all apps work.
I didn't try any of the other recovery options because they were not
appropriate solutions to the issues at hand and in the case of the second
computer, system restore was DOA.
I did the repair install on the first computer because although the issues
were minor, I was unable to find solutions in these newsgroups or online
and I really wanted every feature to work even though I don't use media
center or search very often.
I was really pleased with the results on the second one because it was a
"real world' scenario- lots of problems, little history.
