troubleshooting Vista

Hello, I have just been given a Dell Inspiron laptop to fix with Vista Home 32 bit on it. It does not boot into desktop normally or by safe mode, and on the second try it gave me an 0x7b blue screen.

I am quite used to sorting XP problems out but this will be the first Vista and I do not really know my way around it. It was trying to do a system repair the first time I switched it on, but that foundered when we got to a place where I needed to put a password in - which I have not (yet) been given, and I assume the laptops young owner would already have allowed that to continue, but had not had a resolution.

I assume that that is something like Last Known Good Configuration or system restore. Would that be correct?

If it was XP I would put the OS disk in and go to recovery console and run Chkdsk - can I do that with Vista? I don't want to put the disk in and then find I have entered the setup routine.

Are there any other tools I can use to troubleshoot the situation?

All help appreciated.

2 things - to utilize the last good known configuration is to tap f2 after the bios comes comes up (at the blank screen called POST).
the second thing, you can run chkdsk from startup repair. if he supplied you with the vista recovery disc, put it in and you will come up to the repair screen. somewhere (can't remember off the top of my head) there is a command prompt button in the window, and if you open it and type 'chkdsk' (without quotes) and press enter.
if that fails, it might have to be a vista reinstall or if someone else will post something else.

Dom

thank you Dom, I shall do the F2 thing when I get back to it tomorrow.The only disk with the machine is the OS. Perhaps the startup repair was running from that when I first tried to boot the machine, though I had not pressed any keys to initiate it. Thanks for your help; a little further forward

pawzisme said:

thank you Dom, I shall do the F2 thing when I get back to it tomorrow.The only disk with the machine is the OS. Perhaps the startup repair was running from that when I first tried to boot the machine, though I had not pressed any keys to initiate it. Thanks for your help; a little further forward

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