Vista in-place repair

A

AJ&NiteOwls

Member
Hi Guys - I'm back... I need some direction on how to do an in-place repair (some say upgrade) on a Toshiba Satellite Pro with Vista Home Basic.

I have the Vista Boot Recovery ISO (dated 5/2008) and can remember small portions of the procedure but cannot find the tutorial link.

I believe I need to go down this path (rather than a full disk recovery) because the machine is working okay (to a point - no audio). I noticed at boot time (to Safe Mode) that Vista is labelled Vista Home Basic (Recovered) so I can assume there has been some problem before it was given to me. There are no Restore Points on the disk anymore (don't know why) and everything looks okay until you dig a little deeper and run utilities such as SFC /SCANNOW (which gives up about 30% of the way).

I have checked for Viruses, Trojans etc and there don't appear to be any. I have used UBCD and run CHKDSK over the whole disk - no errors. Interestingly I cannot get Vista to do a CHKDSK on startup by any known method (tried everything but altering the Registry option - option 4 of 4). I have marked the disk as "dirty" but still won't work?????

The Vista version is original, not SP1, and I have tried a "Recovery/Repair" but it doesn't find any problems!!! Yet the System File Check (SFC) points to there being considerable issues and I want to know if there is a way to replace all the Vista files without re-imaging the disk?

If I can get Vista right I think I will be okay as I have used MSConfig to stop all software drivers from being loaded and there is still no audio (not even from Vista itself).

Can you point me in the right direction or make some suggestions?

Regards AJ
 
Upgrading to fix audio problems is not the answer. Go to sound in control panel and reconfigure your speakers. Make sure nothing muted and that the system volume is maxed out. If you're having problems with your audio after this you need to get the latest driver/re-install the current one and its software.
 
Hi did that about 3 weeks ago..... This is not a high level problem. I have re-installed drivers, edited registry, followed every suggestion relating to the audio drivers (believe me there are heaps of problems in this area alone) until I realised it wasn't anything to do with the audio drivers (that's why I used MSConfig to remove all software drivers and just tried to get the basic op sys to give some sound - it couldn't so then I ran SFC).

SFC appears to check whether the current system files are the ones that should be there - they aren't so unless I can figure out a way to re-install/fix op sys I will have to resort to the Recovery disks and re-image the drive, then begin the tedious re-install of all programs and backed up data.....
 
That guide is for fixing a broken boot on a good OS (as is our recovery disk).
You appear to have a working boot on a broken OS.
You can't use our recovery disk to fix that. There are no installation files on it.
You can't do a "repair install" of Vista like you could with XP, they removed that option from the setup.
You will need to use your own full Vista DVD, not our stripped-down recovery CD, or the recovery media that came with (or could be created from) the OEM recovery partition on your PC, and install Vista from scratch if it's really too crippled to continue.
Copy all your files somewhere safe first.
 
Terry60 said:
That guide is for fixing a broken boot on a good OS (as is our recovery disk).
Click to expand...
Yeah, I know that, but I was only responding to his comment about not being able to find the "tutorial link"...
Actually, his problem seems to be only the audio, which is most likely a drivers issue. So, if he follows Justin's advice, and installs the latest sound drivers for his system, the issue should be resolved easily enough.
 
Sorry Jake, the post was meant for AJ as a follow up to your link, based on his post 1 para 3.
He seems to think he just needs to find the link and he'll be able to repair all his many system problems.
I was making sure he understood the nature of the CD, not you.

It's an inevitable problem of having threads without a hierarchical structure that it's not always obvious who or what you're replying to, and I'm too lazy to keep embedding quotes unless it's imperative to make something vital, very clear
 
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Thanks - yes I remember the chaos when I was trying to fix a previous problem, and had a dual boot issue... Thankfully all successfully resolved. I have looked at the wiki - I will follow the "System Restore" process...

Well I've done that and we are in a hell of a mess. Sytem Restore hasn't been turned on... In the Control Panel, under Problem Reports and Solutions, there are multiple BSODs... Windows Explorer has stopped working on numerous occasions... Windows Defender hasn't worked since January 2008.... There audio problems for miles and COM surrogate issues.... Good grief!

I turned on System Restore and created a restore point, and In the Restore process (from the CD) CHKDSK told me there were multiple problems on the hard drive (surprise surprise) which it has cleaned up (!).

Vista still boots (I don't know how) but unless I can restore Vista to a cleaner, correct version I've got no confidence in anything that has been loded later.

I think I'm at backup and clean re-install time!

Have just seen your further input - thanks guys - I guess I know where this is at now...

Thanks againn
 
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Ok, so it turns out you have far more problems than you at first made it sound like...
Yeah, this probably requires a reinstall (sometimes its better to start afresh anyway, that way you have a completely "new" system which should run a lot better than the old). If you're having this many problems, it will probably be your best solution, unless someone else has a suggestion to make of course. :wink: Oh, and while you're at it, you may want to look into the feasibility of partitioning your hard drive, and installing a free distro of Linux onto your computer (such as Ubuntu). It will probably serve you far better in the long run. You can still reinstall Vista, but you can also install Ubuntu (on a separate partition, of course), and dual-boot. Viruses, spyware, and the like, are pretty much non-existant on Linux too, so you wont haft to deal with that kind of crap (so long as you use your Linux OS to browse the Web, and only use Windows for other offline tasks).
 
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