[davemac13]

My dell laptop starts booting up, displays the splash screen and then goes black. The cursor arrow is all that is visible and you can move it around. It won't start in safe mode, does the same thing. It was bought with Windows Vista pre installed and Dell sent a Windows 7 upgrade disk a month later when it came out, which was installed. i tried starting it with the Vista disk in the drive and it will only let me re-install the program, not repair, with the windows 7 disk on startup it offers the option to repair, but when you click ok it says it needs the original Operating system disk. I am stuck.

I might add, that my kid missed some TV show so she says she downloaded it, from where I am unsure, but following the download she shut down the PC and that is where we are now. I am not sure if she downloaded some junk or if the timing is co-incidence.

It will not let me do the startup repair, it fails to complete, and system restore advises that something is missing, so it will not complete.


I have no clue where to start fixing this, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks Dave

[Dell-Kris]

Hello Dave,
My name is Krishna and I work for the Social Media and Community Team at Dell. To the best of my knowledge, the Windows 7 upgrade typically does not have a negative effect on the recovery partition, because it doesn't overwrite or erase it. Hence you should be able to restore your computer's software back to factory settings without using the operating system or upgrade disk. You can follow the instructions from http://dell.to/eyFMom .Hope this helps.

Regards,
Dell-Kris K

[davemac13]

Thanks Kris, If i read this correctly, by doing this I will lose all the data on the hard drive, correct? So my pictures etc will be gone? Is this the only way to fix this or is there another solution to get this running properly? I guess if there is no choice I will do what I have to do, but I would really like to not lose stuff if there is another way.

Please Advise
Dave

[SUEOHIO]

Unless im missing something when you restore/recover a computer back to factory settings you will lose everything thats on there.What you might try to do if you have anything on there that you dont want to lose like pix, music, documents, etc is take out the harddrive and its easier to do on a laptop and then hook up the drive using a usb sata/ide connector to another working computer and you should be able to get everything on there that you dont want to lose since it sounds like the harddrive itself is ok.On most dell laptops to find where the harddrive is look where it says strike zone.The drive should be in that area.If its a dell tower you remove the drive very carefully i might add and hook it up the same way.Once you get whatever data you need burn it to cds so you will have them for future reference.Then put the drive back in and i think you will be able to do the factory restore without losing anything valuable.

[Dell-Kris]

Dave,
Since the repair did not work, the only options is to restore or reinstall Windows. And yes, it will be data destructive. You can do back up of your data as advised by SUEOHIO.

Regards,
Dell-Kris K

[davemac13]

So how do I reinstall? I have both the Vista disk and Win 7 upgrade disk, the link above just takes me to the Dell homepage.

Dave

[fairnooks]

http://www.mydigitallife.info/clean-install-windows-7-with-upgrade-media-and-product-key-on-formatted-or-empty-blank-hard-drive/

[davemac13]

OK....so after 3 weeks of frustration and pushing buttons...I got something called emergency backup to run, it seemed to save files etc and then prompted a restart. Upon restart the pc boots to like braand new, with the original Windows Vista loading. I had upgraded to Windows 7 within a month of buying the PC.

Now, how do I use this emergency backup thing (it is a separate folder on the c drive) and at what point do I reinstall the Windows 7 upgrade, before or after I do the emergency back reload/restore?

It seems I have made some progress in the past 24 hours, vs none in the past 3 weeks, but I am not sure where I am going now.

Thanks Dave

[fairnooks]

Can you tell if its a recovery install? Was it asking for account setup info and activate antivirus messages and such or are all your programs still there and it just created a new user profile?

You go on from there if data and programs are still present but in either case it sounds like you would want to get into the emergency backup folder and make a real backup of all your data to an external hard drive if you haven't done so already.

If programs you have installed are not there, then it was a recovery install, so after getting your data backed up, you could either upgrade again to Windows 7 or better yet, perform a clean upgrade install.

[davemac13]

So I copy the contents of the emergency folder to a DVD and then put in my upgrade disk? I don't have an external Hard drive.

It looks like a fresh install, it didn't ask for registrations but it looks like it did the day I got it. All it asked me to do was create a login id and password and I used the same as before.

Whats the difference between an upgrade and a clean upgrade install?

And after I do either, how do I put my pictures etc from my backup onto the pc again?

Sorry, not so savvy on this stuff.

Thanks
Dave

[fairnooks]

Yes, you can copy your data to a DVD, make two copies if you can and before erasing anything check the DVD in another system to be sure you can access the data. It would be even better if you could make one copy on DVD and another on a USB thumbdrive but if you verify the DVD contents, one form of media is alright as well.

To perform a clean install you would choose Custom instead of Upgrade from the Win 7 upgrade disc and then choose the partition that Vista is already installed on, which is probably the C: drive. It'll probably warn you a time or two that its going to wipe out your current windows setup but then it should install a pristine copy of Windows 7 and put all the Vista installation files into a folder called windows.old which can later be deleted.
An upgrade install would integrate Vista registry settings and programs into Windows 7, but since you don't have any of your programs installed at this point, its generally better to go with a clean install since it tends to be more stable and reliable than an upgrade.

After creating your profile in the new installation its just a simple matter of copying the data from the backup to the corresponding data folders in Windows 7; and keep the backup! In fact make more periodically, its a fairly lucky thing if you got all your data back after all this.