Windows 7 Upgrade Gone Bad--Disk Won't Boot

R

Razor7Tech

Active Member
Hello--

I always get outstanding support from this forum, so I'm hoping someone here can assist me in repairing this OS booting issues.

The user said he started the upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 but did not finish it. He said he got to a dialog window and wanted to end, but his little son pressed a key and the upgrade began. Now when we try to boot from the disk, it looks like it starts to load the Windows 7 files and then dies.

I am able to browse all of the files on the drive when it is connected to another computer, and there is no Windows old folder, so I don't know how to do a rollback.

I have the drive at my tech bench at work and so I have all the tools at my disposal, but I just don't know the best way to restore this drive to boot into Vista again and preserve all of the user's files.

Any help it really appreciated.

Thanks,

sd

PS. The drive also has an HP recovery partition on it--if that helps.
 
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Computer Guru said:
Have you tried our boot repair instructions at http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Recovering+the+Vista+Bootloader+from+the+DVD ?
Click to expand...

Excellent. Thank you. He does not have the OS CD and we don't have Vista here at work--so this is his only option.

It should work, I believe.

Thanks again.

Addendum:

Dang, when I boot into the Vista repair disk and select the option of Repair, I get a pop up window that says "this version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair."

The user has Vista Home edition. Any way to work around this? I see Vista listed in the System Recovery options window.

Thanks,

sd

Addendum:

Hmm, maybe he has the 64-bit version installed and that's the problem as I downloaded the 32.

Addendum:

UPDATE--

Yea, that was it. He has Vista Home 64-bit. Everything should be good to go now.

Thank you!
 
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Well, we're not out of the woods yet, unfortunately. Now it seems like the OS will boot, but it boots into a black screen. You can see the cursor, and it will even go into screen saver eventually. Cannot open task manager, etc.

I did many searches online and it looks like this is a common occurance for Vista. I am trying the bootrec utilities now from a command prompt but wondered if you know how to solve this? If it's boot related? MS KB article says to reinstall Vista, but that would be a last resort.

Thanks again,

sd
 
We tried all of the options that the recovery CD allowed. The black screen seems to be an epidemic for Vista. I just advised the user to move forward with the Windows 7 upgrade. It was taking longer to try to go backwards then to just move forward.

I appreciate the help.
 
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