Restoring Vista on a laptop. (Good luck solving this riddle!)

[ziomatrixacs]

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hello again.

As it seems that 'all is lost' the best bet may be as barman58 suggested earlier.
Contact hp here with the model / serial numbers of the machine in question and they will send you a replacement set of the recovery discs for a nominal fee to recover with.



Later Ted

Some one should not have to pay to get a damn cd of something they bought in the first place. She agrees and would rather sell her POS computer and buy one that works with out any bull crap happening like this.
She doesnt know much about computers, so the OS should be designed so the average use cant delete the OS and everything else with the click of a button through NORTON. I guess we are SOL:sa:

Like I tell any one else. Once you go mac, you dont go back to M$ crap.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Well you don't have to be rude to the people that tried to help you......:eek:

















Later Ted

 

[Mustangsupra]

If it is still under warranty the discs cost next to nothing. Hmmmm lets see, take huge loss and sell computer or call hp, spend a few bucks and maybe have a running computer. Hard choice. Its just a phone call.

Jeremy

 

[Fumz]

I checked out the making a bootable USB key. First thing it says is I need a Retail vista DVD. So I cant use the download from this link?

Download details: Windows Vista

If I download that, it seems to be the most legal option I have, I would have to burn it to a DVD and not a CD correct? Which means down load with my mac, burn with my PC.

I made a made a bootable USB stick with a trial version of Server 2008, so this Vista trial may also work for you? It's certainly a faster option than waiting for the U.S. Post office. If it works, great; if it doesn't, no harm done.

 

[dmex]

I downloaded both the 32 and 64 bit versions and put them in a USB drive. Had to tape F9 to get it to select the boot device. I got this error:
Disc I/O ERROR
REPLACE THE DISK, AND THEN PRESS ANY KEY
I pressed keys, nothing worked

If you placed both 32bit and 64bit versions on a USB drive thats where you failed, A usb install can be rather complicated sometimes aswel so stick to using the install DVDs (they are 4.5GB isos)...

So I plopped the Windows Vista 64 bit recovery into Toast 9 and burned it to a CD-R (Had to do research on the processor/computer, its a 64 bit home pro version)
Popped it in the Laptop and it said: Install vista? Repair vista? I hit Repair vista and it gave me quite a few options. I hit Repair vista inside that menu and it asked which OS I would like to fix. Nothing appeared. It said if you dont see any, click “load drivers.” I hit that and a bunch of files came up and at the end of each one, it said nothing found, folder empty or it isnt related to the hard ware. I searched around and found D or E drive I think, and it too was empty... searched C drive, got nothing. Searched all of the folders and the only thing that had any contents was the CD!

You only need that option to load drivers for SATA hard-drives in desktop computers not laptops

I clicked next anyways. It said repairing for about 10 minutes then it said restart the computer and see if it works. I restart it, nothing happens. I then hit system recovery and system restore, they both say I need to specify a drive to repair from. There are none showing up. It said “ would you like to report this error to micro soft?” and had a drop down box showing the details. It said something about Missing boot manager

So I am starting to get real P/O’d. I go to “Install vista” and it asks for the SN after warning me a billion times. I hit install and I get “Error code 0x80070002 cannot find E:\Sources\Install.wim”

Now what? It appears as if she completely whipped the HD clean of the HP repair partition and vista. (which I think is BS any ways) There are no discs for her to install Vista with. So now I have to take the risk and try to find Windows Vista home premium 64bit and install that.. Cant be Windows ultimate or one of the other million flavors since I dont have that license.. Eh! I am sticking to Mac’s...The commercials are true

I have never heard of Norton wiping the entire harddrive or the seperate recovery partition once in the last 20 years and wiping both partitions is actually very hard to accomplish unless your using Gparted(linux), since its not showing up I suspect she actually killed the hard-drive hardware (even the slightest knock or jolt can actually kill laptop hard-drives)

Every Vista DVD contains every Vista Version, It gets automatically selected when you enter the cd-key or you dont enter a cd-key and you can manually select a version to install so any Vista DVD will do...

(The mac adverts are only true if you dont know what your doing )

Could some one give me a virus free 100% working DVD copy for Win Vista 64 bit home premium? (I also need it to be virus free!) Minus the SN of course, I have a legal one that is on a sticker on the computer. If not , could some one copy their vista file and post it as an .iso so all I have to do is burn it to a CD-R and run it?
I searched around and I found files ranging from 600mb to 4.5gb which just doesnt make sense.. how would I make a 4.5gb file fit in a DVD let alone a CD... eh .. I must agree though ,it is going to be difficult finding a legal copy of vista for free.

It sucks, you try to be legal and you get screwed by having to buy another copy of something you should have gotten in the first place because of people doing illegal activities with the disc so you have to resort to boarder line illegal methods of getting a dag on OS you paid for!

I talked to my friend some more, she said it was either a Trojan horse or a White ghost she saw pop up..

So, my conclusion: Hard disc has been whipped clean or some pointer file got deleted leaving the info on the HD but very difficult to access. There appears to be no HP recovery partition any more either. Only option appears to be to get a vista disk and every one I know including a near by college uses Mac's or XP. There are only a handful of vista machines around here. I guess you could say they are the odd balls

Did you listen to the advice given in my last post and others??? Call HP and ask them for replacement Recovery DVDs...Spending $20 to get them is easier than spending $2000+ on an Apple machine

Some one should not have to pay to get a damn cd of something they bought in the first place. She agrees and would rather sell her POS computer and buy one that works with out any bull crap happening like this.
She doesnt know much about computers, so the OS should be designed so the average use cant delete the OS and everything else with the click of a button through NORTON. I guess we are SOL:sa:

Like I tell any one else. Once you go mac, you dont go back to M$ crap.

Its utterly not possible to delete the entire OS and 'everything else' with Norton or anything on Windows, if you believe that then your a fool

You started out blaming a virus and Norton then her hard-drive and now your blaming Microsoft because you dont understand how things have worked with X86 hardware/software for the last 10 years

I quote:

If it is still under warranty the discs cost next to nothing. Hmmmm lets see, take huge loss and sell computer or call hp, spend a few bucks and maybe have a running computer. Hard choice. Its just a phone call.

Jeremy

 

[rive0108]

DMEX-
You only need that option to load drivers for SATA hard-drives in desktop computers not laptops

Maybe I misunderstood you, are you saying SATA hdd drivers are not required for loading in notebooks? Everytime I reinstall Vista I have to load hdd sata drivers from floppy/usb thumb drive in order to see my drive, and i have a notebook.