vista restart and restore problems

I installed new hard drive and moved old drive to new. after this I have lost my ability to use the restart feature in vista. I have tried it all, I also found out my system restore wont work and wont activate. Several quirks I cant fix, tried the system repair with original disk but no help. What are some ideas I might try? Thanks Rick

It's not possible to help you if you can't be bothered to give proper information.

"I installed new hard drive and moved old drive to new"

What does that mean?
Does it mean you moved the old hard disk to a new computer?
Or does it mean you copied the system from the old hard disk to the new hard disk? If so, please explain how you copied it and what program you did it with, because if you copied it the wrong way, it won't work.

Maybe the old system was on an IDE disk and the new one is a SATA disk? We can't see it, so if you don't tell us in your message we won't know.

Did you only connect a new hard disk or have you made some other hardware changes too?

"I have lost my ability to use the restart feature in vista"

Does that mean when you click Restart from the Start Menu, nothing happens?
What happens when you switch on the computer? Does it start up normally? Do your programs run normally?

"I have tried it all"

What have you tried?
What was the result of each of the things you tried, such as what error messages came up on the screen.
We were not there at the time so we don't know what happened.

"I also found out my system restore wont work and wont activate."

What happened when you try to do a system restore? Does it say there are no restore points saved to go back to?
What do you mean by "it won't activate"? Do you mean System Restore can't be turned on?

"Several quirks I cant fix"

You can't expect people to advise you how to fix quirks if you won't tell us what they are.

"What are some ideas I might try?"

Write a proper message with good information in it.

You only bothered to write "Vista" in your specs. We don't know if it's Vista Home Basic or Vista Ultimate. We don't know if it's a laptop or desktop computer.

If you don't want to describe the computer and what you have done to it and what the results were, you will have to take it to a computer shop to get it fixed, because it's impossible to help you on a forum.

Wow, Old Bloke, you seem to have gotten up in fowl mood. This was my first time ever on forum, give me a break, I have never requested input before so I guess I dont know proper etiquite for your help. sorry.
I have Vista home premium, on a desktop. running 4g of memory, quad 2 duo processor, built system myself, ran great for 1 year. Changed from a 250 to a 500g hardrive. Used Acronis True image to clone the drive. All went well with clone, removed old drive and kept as a backup. Now when my system tries to restart from an update or program install it shuts down correctly and power to monitor stops but cpu is still powered up and running. I have to shut down with power switch on power supply or power strip. When i use the restart button on vista I get the same result, monitor shuts down but not computer. Tried to repair by using Vista repair on disk but this did not help, it said no problems found. Ran diagnostics on hard disk and all is fine.
I then found that I could not use restore on vista, It said there were no restore points available, I tried to create one and it said the action was not allowed. Tried to activate restore on system and got same error that action was not allowed.
Went back to Acronis to run a backup as I do weekly , I always do a full backup of entire hardrive. When it gets to portion where it begins backup the entire system shuts down with no warning, just as if I unplugged everything. See if this helps.

Hi revrick3
Yes, on reading my message I agree it was too heavy. Sorry about that.

"See if this helps."
Yes it does. Now I have a much better picture of what's going on
There are several possible cause for the problems (such as maybe a recent Windows Update) so you will need to do some trouble-shooting to track it down.

"Tried to repair by using Vista repair on disk..."
The repair feature from the Vista DVD is quite limited. It can only fix a few kinds of problems, such as Vista's startup files if the system won't boot.

It's great that you have your weekly Acronis backups. I suggest you try this:

Boot the Acronis program CD.
(If you don't have one yet, run Acronis in Windows > Tools > Create Bootable Rescue Media.)

First, make a backup image of the current state, but only if you have enough space for it on your backups drive without having to delete any earlier Acronis backups. Hopefully a backup will work when Acronis isn't running in Windows. (Maybe you don't have enough space for several Acronis backup images. If so you could just selectively make backup copies of any valuable recent data files, emails, etc.)

Then restore an Acronis image from before the troubles started. Then boot the hard disk and see if the problems still exist.

If using the old system has the same problems, you will have to suspect a hardware fault, not a software fault.

If using the old system works and can do a restart, you will know the fault was cause by something in the most recent Windows state, such as one of the automatic Windows Updates or some other software change you made.

While still running the restored older system, you could change your options for Windows Update from "automatically install them" to "check for updates and then ask me which ones to install". Then you can install them from the list one at a time, to see if one of them breaks the Restart. If you still have no faults after installing all the updates, it must be some other software change you made.

"Went back to Acronis to run a backup as I do weekly , I always do a full backup of entire hardrive. When it gets to portion where it begins backup the entire system shuts down with no warning, just as if I unplugged everything."

If the same thing happens when you try to make an Acronis backup using its bootable CD (when Windows isn't actually running) then it must be choking on a hard disk problem, either a hardware fault or file system corruption.
If so, I would do a full test with Seagate's Seatools for DOS, run from a bootable CD or floppy.
Seagate Technology - SeaTools