see if you can get your head round this PLEASE

[NUKEMALL]

first off hello all great site been a great help for the silly things i find go wrong with the software on my computers .
ok here we go .......
vista (hate it)
but a young friend of my daughters has asked me to sort out her computer for her . said i would then found out it is running vista .
right , vista stopped booting just a black screen , went through all the things i know (my brains run xp ) i can under stand that .
tried the vista start up recovery but it locked at (start up repair) and ran for 2 days . ok i forgot it was running
tried most things but could not get to the command promt when i asked the unit to repair my computer it went strate to the start up repair screen again . so was left with what i thought was the only answer F11 .
but NO pressed this and just got a black screen and the hdd stopped .


2 days reading google posts and it seemed that if i got the computer to boot from a vista disk and repair it should be ok .
but no got a working copy of vista pro that needs to be activated .
but i can still not start the unit from F11 to recover the packard bell os .
can any one help
i can now get to the command prompt and checked the drives .
drives on the computer .
c: main hdd
d: recovery hdd
x: vista start disk
how the hell can i get the recovery drive to start .
or if i get the code for the fujitsu vista pro disk (off a unit from work) will this activate pro ????
any help will be great .
thanks

[C64]

Forget a Recovery, they are shit anyway.

Do a complete format and re-install, it's always the best option.

[NUKEMALL]

Forget a Recovery, they are shit anyway.

Do a complete format and re-install, it's always the best option.

i dont have a working liecence for vista pro .
and the young one never made recovery disks for the computer.

thanks for your quick reply

[tonybod]

Is this machine a laptop?

And can it boot into safe mode?

[NUKEMALL]

Is this machine a laptop?

And can it boot into safe mode?

yes mate its a packard bell laptop
when i got the computer all you could do with it was power on and it would go into windows start up repair .
now i have a copy of windows running on it but i cant register that and still cant get the original recovery sector to boot from F11.
the partition is still there and is complete
the os i have on it at the mo was only installed so i could get to the comand propt with out start up repair kicking in . i have never seen anything like this before

[Sirus]

Im no expert.. nor have I used or dealt with vista much, but my sister asked me to look at her laptop with vista on it saying it wouldnt boot no more just black screen

When I turned it on it booted normally but instead of showing the part where it says microsoft corp it just stayed blank.. the thing is after rebooting I pushed one of the "F" keys during bootup but I cant remember which one as I pressed them all at once to try and get to the bios.. but anyway whatever one I pressed it went to a ram or mem test thing and ran a test then when finished it worked

I know this is prob the worst oversight ever but try it out anyway

[afoul1]

reply to wrong poster

[afoul1]

i dont have a working liecence for vista pro .
and the young one never made recovery disks for the computer.

thanks for your quick reply

F&R is always a last resort my friend, if you would like some help just let me know.

[afoul1]

first off hello all great site been a great help for the silly things i find go wrong with the software on my computers .
ok here we go .......
vista (hate it)
but a young friend of my daughters has asked me to sort out her computer for her . said i would then found out it is running vista .
right , vista stopped booting just a black screen , went through all the things i know (my brains run xp ) i can under stand that .
tried the vista start up recovery but it locked at (start up repair) and ran for 2 days . ok i forgot it was running
tried most things but could not get to the command promt when i asked the unit to repair my computer it went strate to the start up repair screen again . so was left with what i thought was the only answer F11 .
but NO pressed this and just got a black screen and the hdd stopped .


2 days reading google posts and it seemed that if i got the computer to boot from a vista disk and repair it should be ok .
but no got a working copy of vista pro that needs to be activated .
but i can still not start the unit from F11 to recover the packard bell os .
can any one help
i can now get to the command prompt and checked the drives .
drives on the computer .
c: main hdd
d: recovery hdd
x: vista start disk
how the hell can i get the recovery drive to start .
or if i get the code for the fujitsu vista pro disk (off a unit from work) will this activate pro ????
any help will be great .
thanks

go to packard bell website input the model number of the laptop and search "recovery from restore partition."

[NUKEMALL]

go to packard bell website input the model number of the laptop and search "recovery from restore partition."

i have tried that they even have an old win 98 disk there that downloads the good old dos prompt .
i ran F11.bat from there that should have fixed the boot problem but it did not work .
starting to thing the HDD is U/S

[afoul1]

What that usually means is that the recovery partition has been corrupted or deleted. What you should do is look on the laptop for the COA find out what version of windows its supposed to have on it. I saw you said vista pro but there is no vista pro, its either vista hm basic, vista hm prem, vista ultimate, or buisness. If its win 7 it has a pro or of course xp. If you give me the model number of the laptop i will see if i might have a restore disk i could upload for you. Let me know.