GRcade

is strawberry floated.

Powered it on yesterday aftter coming home from work to be greeted with the startup repair screen, then to be told it cant fix the problem and it shuts down.... I cannot load my vista partition either as when I press F10 all I get is the edit boot options screen.

Can anyone help me please? My 14 days off have just started and my laptop is strawberry floated.

Didn't you get back-up discs with it? Or the option to create a back-up this? (obviously the horse has bolted there)

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

'Acquire' the Vista media, and repair your OS installation.

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-v ... -download/

See here.

I have a recovery cd but it wont boot at all, Im thinking I may have downloaded the wrong one.... my laptop wont get past the boot screen now. Will this fix this problem.

And thanks.

glowy69 wrote:I have a recovery cd but it wont boot at all, Im thinking I may have downloaded the wrong one.... my laptop wont get past the boot screen now. Will this fix this problem.

And thanks.

You have set the CD in the boot order, haven't you?

Yes. I think I may have downlloaded the wrong one, the link you posted got me as far as the product key page...I dont have a product key and the one under my laptop doesnt work. I tried to avoid entering it and passed the validation screen only to be presented with an error message saying a file was missing?

This is doing my nut in but I really appreciate your help mate.

It says this

Windows cannot open the required file E:\sources\install.wim. The file does not exist. Make sure all files required for installation are avilable and restart the installation.

glowy69 wrote:It says this

Windows cannot open the required file E:\sources\install.wim. The file does not exist. Make sure all files required for installation are avilable and restart the installation.

Is this for the recovery CD?

basically, a .wim is a Windows image file, as part of the restore process, it'll restore a factory created image of the hard-drive. As opposed to having you go through the process of loading the OS and locating drivers and such.

With regards to the Vista repair CD. Have you tried the repair option? It shouldn't ask you for a product key, if you're not installing it.

Boot off the CD and take a screenie.

A screen grab? How do I get that on here?

The file missing is from the link you gave me. Its goes through everything after I bypass the product key screen only to be greeted with that error message

The recovery CD wont do anything, it boots and stops saying no valid cdrom drivers selected, and then hangs on the dos screen.

It seems the windows OS disc has a file missing and the recovery disc I purchased is to be used when vista is actually working.

You should probably "acquire" the full Windows Vista OS disc and start from a fresh install.

Or just grab the latest Windows 7 RC and install that.

It sounds like you've had an unfortunate combination of (a) a strawberry floated Windows install and (b) a strawberry floated Windows recovery disc.



Either that or your RAM is really, really strawberry floated. Try everything else before assuming that, though.

Drunken_Master wrote:

glowy69 wrote:It says this

Windows cannot open the required file E:\sources\install.wim. The file does not exist. Make sure all files required for installation are avilable and restart the installation.

Is this for the recovery CD?

basically, a .wim is a Windows image file, as part of the restore process, it'll restore a factory created image of the hard-drive. As opposed to having you go through the process of loading the OS and locating drivers and such.

With regards to the Vista repair CD. Have you tried the repair option? It shouldn't ask you for a product key, if you're not installing it.

Boot off the CD and take a screenie.

I'd imagine there used to be a restore partition, which has been removed. The restore disk is looking for files that no longer exist.

Yes that is what DM said. He has linked me to a utilitiy disc which doesnt seem to want to boot at (on mine or another laptop) So I gues the recovery is gone, does anyone else have any ideas?

ITS FIXXXXXXXXXXXEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

glowy69 wrote:ITS FIXXXXXXXXXXXEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What happened then?

As far as I can tell a tiny bit of the recovery partition had been corrupted hence why I could alt F10 it. What caused it I dont know and I dont know how it was fixed as I gave it to my 'mate' who has sent it back good as new. Thanks for you help mate and you probably could have fixed it too had you got your hands on it just Im a strawberry floating pleb when it comes to pcs and repairs