Vista Tutorial - Did I break it ?

First off, thankyou in advance for any help provided. Only just found these forums and have a feeling they are going to be very helpful

I picked up a shiny new PC yesterday much to the annoyance of the wife (oops) and everything seemed to be running nicley untill I wanted to use an old HDD like a USB memory stick for file transferes.

I plugged it in and a little message popped up saying device installed (i think), but I could not find it anywhere. No folder or options as to which way I'd want to view the files and nothing on the "Computer" tab. It was like there was nothing plugged in. I know it should work as it shows on the wifes laptop with 32bit Vista on it.

A friend with a bit more Vista experience tried to install WMD from a menu which came up as failed and now tries to install on every time I switch the machine on.

But also, now when I click the "Computer" tab, explorer crashes and hangs. Task manager tries to close it but nothing happens, so I have to reset the PC. It seems like the HDD is searching for something while it tries to close.


Could my HDD be at fault or should I just reinstall Vista and cross my fingers ?

Games and the internet work fine, but I can't access the computer tab.


any help would be great.

Do you see your USB device in my Computer/Manage/Disk Management
If yes, assign a letter.
If not: reboot with the device plugged in.

Nope saw nothing there.

Tried to reboot with it plugged in and still nothing happened.

But once my mate tried to install the WMD thing I cant access the my computer tab anymore, it just crashes explorer sadly.

Everything else seems ok, brought the files across from the wifes laptop.

I'm more worried about the crashing than the USB to b honest, I now know about public folders so used them on both machines to move things over. But explorer hanging is unerving at best.

It dont really help that I know next to nothing about Vista, would be nice if MS pt an "instructions written in crayon" folder for me

What you did, shouldn't break it. I can think of lots of possibilities as to potential registry errors... but, in consideration of the newness of the PC being less than 48 hours since you bought it, how do you feel about using the recovery CD to set it back to the way it was when you brought it home?

You could try doing a System Restore - Start, key in 'System Restore' enter. If there is a restore point prior to plugging in the USB drive that would be the way to go, otherwise run the recovery CD.

Perhaps someone else will have a better idea as to exactly what happened?

-solon fox

Will look for a recovery disk when i get in. Only found the Vista box and disc so far.

Good point on the restore though, might try that and see if one has been set by the guys that made the PC. If they set one after testing and before shipping them I'm in luck


btw how do I get Vista to stop asking questions every 2 mins ? have expertview installed and every startup I get asked if I want to let it run. Any options to switch it off or a box to tick to say run everytime ?


sorry for being a pita, will get the hang of things eventually.

Well, there is a lot too UAC and I'm kinda against the willy nilly shutting it off sort of thing. In your case, I would suggest the tutorial on this site - User Account Control (UAC) - Elevate Privilege Level

There's a lot to learn about UAC, of course you could just shut it off for now and learn later. User Account Control (UAC)

There is also a TweakUAC utility that is right for some people. It may be right for you and it may not. Disable Annoying Vista UAC popups with TweakUAC (free!) What is TweakUAC?

I hope this helps.
-solon fox

BTW - once you get your settings back, we can figure out what went bonkers with the USB drive thing - after setting a restore point of course.

Well i rang the Pc place and ran the Vista restore so it went back to factory settings, but still no joy on the explorer crashing when i try to open the computer tab.

Just done the updates and other bits so will see what they say about this crashing, but so far it's driving me mad


Gonna have a look through the links too m8, thanks for those.

Okay that busts me.

I can't figure how the recovery failed to solve the problem. I can't think of anything that you could've done to cause this either.

I'd ask the place you bought it to replace it. I'd just give them the abridged version, I bought this two days ago and Start->Computer crash! WTH??

Sorry man.

-solon fox

I can - installing whatever WMD is - the files are still there - even if the registry is not....

Well I think I might of solved one problem and found another yay lol.


Reset the machine to some sort of end user state but explorer still crashed. Rang the PC firm and finally got hold of a guy who would actually try things out.

Ran a memory test and the screen went blank, so he told me it failed the test and to retry it with 1 stick in each time (tonights job).but I find it odd my PC can still see 4gb on startup, and even in the system info stuff.


He then asked if the USB drive was an old HDD in an enclosure so ofc I replied yes.
Uplugged it and reset the PC and the computer tab now works perfectly. Plug the drive in and it goes pear shaped. Apparently he found the same thing happening on another machine and SP1 appears to fix it. So he said to try and force an install of SP1.

Tried to get SP1, but the MS site throws up something about using the updater only to install stuff, but no option to get SP1 in there

Any direct links for it, or is it a bad idea ?


The PC works like a dream for the most part, cracking framerates in WoW, Crysis and C+C3 so far

Thanks very much for the help and links guys, really appreciate it.