Trouble booting from CD (Vista)

W

wischneider

Member
Hi everyone,

There is a similar thread to this but I figured I'd have a better chance of getting help by starting my own... I'm running an Acer desktop with Vista, it crashed and I was able to restore it safely twice, but it crashed both times and I was only able to load windows in safe mode. The code on the boot-screen is all messed up, with letters switched around and it says, among other things, "TERIDYING DMI PMOL DATA" instead of "VERIFYING DMI POOL DATA." First thing I did was reseat my RAM and clean out the inside of my computer, and it does still run so I do not think it is a hardware problem.

I don't think I received a vista reboot disc when I bought my computer, so I bought and downloaded this disc, burned it to a CD using the imgburn program like recommended, and it doesn't work!

I tried to restart and boot from the disc, and it loads on the bottom then my computer screen goes blank (actually goes into sleep mode)... I have tried to do it and have let it run for a while, but nothing ever happened.

I really want to reinstall Vista and be able to basically start over, since I can't afford to buy a new computer right now...

Any recommendations? Right now I'm thinking that this thing is a scam and I want my money back...
 
Yes, Terry, thank you, my BIOS is set to boot CDROM before my HDD, I read something about that and did it before. Right now I can't even get it started in Safe Mode, it seems like it's gotten worse... it'll load in the beginning and then I select safe mode (or any one of the 10 other options I get) and it'll load but then stops in transition to windows.

I've tested my motherboard, RAM sticks, and video card and they are all good. I'm convinced that it is my OS and BIOS that are corrupted. You know how I was talking about on the load screen my letters are messed up? It's the same in the BIOS when I hit F12 on start-up... It's a software issue, not a hardware issue... So I've got a perfectly good working computer but Vista has failed me...?

I can't boot it from the CD but I've just recently burned the same image file to a DVD, possibly might have luck with that (but probably not). When I boot from the CD it loads and seems like it's going somewhere but then quits. It actually quits sending a signal to the monitor, but the computer stays on and runs. And I even let it run overnight to see if it needed time, but when I got up in the morning nothing had happened.

So right now, I can't even get it to boot at all... do you know any tricks about that?
 
It's unfortunate that a borked OS can also prevent the MS repair disc from booting (It checks the HDD as it boots and can fall at the same hurdle). Some bootable partition managers will let you run a chkdsk against the failing partition, which might get you past the sticking point when you next try to boot the CD.
(you can run chkdsk from the MS CD, but you've got to persuade it to boot first)
If the partition manager, or a Linux live distro won't boot (they don't care about the state of your OS), then start looking at the hardware again.
 
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If your not uncomfortable with hardware tinkering I would reset the bios using the jumper on the motherboard and I would put a new battery in. A weak battery will do some wierd things to a setup and shorting the reset jumpers will clear this when you put a new battery in. If you try this Good luck and BTW Happy Thanksgiving!
 
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