disaster ??

I had a disaster last night and following a couple of odd occurances in the day and a windows update, the computer refused to shut down. It just sat on the screen saying do not switch off installing update 3 of 3for an hour.

I am pretty sure a disk has died due to the diagnostics built into the Compac.

My question.

I bought this machine, with Vista home premium at the time that Windows 7 was about to come out. I took advantage of the "FREE" upgrade to Win7 (which cost about £30 for the Media and delivery).

I duly installed the update and I have both the original recovery disks and the update disk and both product keys.

To re-install, do I have to start with Vista, or can I just start with the Wn7 Disk?

(Not looking forward to finding out how perfect my backup was, but I am looking forward to a relatively clean machine.

Why, does it not boot anymore? from your post it just looks like an update has gone dodgy...

Anyhow, you might be able to install Windows 7 fresh without going Vista first, the best thing to do is give it a go. If you have to do Vista first, it isn't a huge problem as the upgrade path works almost just as well as a clean providing the old OS is fresh too.

a bootable Win7 disk should give you the option of restoring to an earlier point.

I have actually removed the main disk now in the hope that I may get something off it, when I have the machine back up and running.

In answer to both the above. I went through the various recovery processes including restoring to an earlier point. Unfortunately it did not work and the final reboot I tried was in safe mode and it simply hung with the disk light going the whole time, half way through loading all the bits in needed.

During my recovery activities, I pressed F9 on startup, which on a compact Desktop takes you to a diagnostic routine. The memory and the two additional disks passed. However the main disk failed, and during the scanning process for that disk, it paused several times.

I mentioned earlier that there had been a couple of strange things during the day, these were basically long delays in any response form the machine, slow loading of programs, excessive CPU usage and high memory usage. I was concerned after the excessive disk activity ( while the computer was not responding), and decided to run a back up of all my email in case. The rest of my files I think are fairly safe as they were on unaffected disks.

Edit

Appologies I should have said thanks for your comments, I will definitely try the Win7 disk first,just clearing the contents of a spare disk before I can get started.

Edited by philippercival (Sat 22-Jun-13 12:10:34)

If you have an OEM version of WIndows 7 then you can just install from the the disc, select the version you are installing and enter the product key.

However, if you have an upgrade version then it will only let you upgrade another version of Windows, you can't just install it.

But there is a well known double install workaround. Install from your upgrade disc, select the correct version, but DO NOT enter the product key.

Now once installed, perform an in place upgrade from the WIndows 7 disk, this time entering your product key and it will happily upgrade it's self.

Or there are registry hacks, either way see this guide

This also works for W8, at least the double install method does.

I had a few problems with a Win7 machine and tracked it down to a Windows update, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2839011 After I uninstalled security update 2823324 the machine was fine

Thank you for your reply. Only just seen it and fingers crossed I am past that bit.

Seemed to install OK from my Windows Upgrade disk, I took the custom installation route rather than the standard.

Just going through the nightmare of windows updates installing and re starting. So far it has pulled down about 700Mb of updates. Luckily I have a fast connection, I hate to think how long it would take on a rural one.

I thought I would get windows installed first + Waterfox and antivirus stuff, then start on my applications after all the updates were finished.

Have you activated it? I would do that before going to far, as that is where it can fail.

Thank you for the warning, I have now and it was successful.

The computer is gradually getting back to the way I want it. Now it is just a case of trying to remember what I need on it and grabbing a copy of those programs.

From time to time I run Belarc Advisor on my PCs and print the results, it can be so useful to remind me of the state of the PC and the installed programs.