Vista - Repair Install For Vista

I went to Office Depot and they burned a CD for me that allowed me to connect an external drive and pull files off my hard drive. I transferred all the files I wanted after about an hour. Then did a clean install of Vista. I'm not installing SP1 again. I was out $60 for the cost of the ext. drive. But cheaper than having somebody else do it and wasting more time trying repairs to no avail.

Good luck.

MWdream,

I'm sorry to hear that you had to go through so much trouble. You might also consider a 3rd party program like Acronis True Image that can be used to make backups of your files and a clone of your hard drive that you can restore from a DVD(s) at boot. You can try a 15 day trial version below to see if you like.

Complete hard disk recovery solution, backup, drive copy, clone and image computer software

Shawn

Yes this can be the reason because I installed many updates after installing Vista. Anyway I will not use this option then.

Also I cannot use System Restore bucause I accidentally delete all system restore points with CCleaner before.

Thank you for your help.

You're welcome Hasan. Sorry you will not be able to do a Repair (upgrade) install.

I have a DVD of Vista with SP1 (got it in August 08).

Is the warning right at the top of this thread that the repair instal doesn't work if you have SP1 installed still correct now that DVDs have been shipping for some time with SP1 on them?

Thanks

Hi Barryco,

Yes, if your retail Vista installation DVD includes the SP1, then you may be able to use it to do a repair (Upgrade) install since it will be the same version. I will update the tutorial for this.

Shawn

Quick question. Maybe the wrong place but though I might get help here. I am going to do a repair install and may need to do a clean one if it doesn't fix my problem. I use Ghost 11.0 to back up. I have 2 backups going. One that is my whole computer and another that is just my documents. I found out that the my docs backup is compressed and I would rather have a straight uncompressed backup. If I have to do a clean install, is there a way for Ghost to restore just the my documents backup? I assume I can't use my image of the whole HD to re-install Vista Ultimate. So far I can only find a way to restore individual documents, not entire folders, which would be such a time waster and impossible to know if you got it all. There must be an easier way an I hope you guys can help. Thanks in advance.

Hi GPiddy, and welcome to Vista Forums.

I'm not sure with Norton Ghost 11.0, you will need to ask about that program in the Software forum for more chances of replies for it..

Usually for certain items I keep everything in one folder, then just manually backup that folder to DVD or some other external media to be safe. This way it's easier to restore if needed by being able to see everything that is in the backup using this method since there is no compression or encryption preventing you fom seeing the backup files.

If you have a whole HD image, you should be able to restore it to have Vista Ultimate back as it was at the time the image was made. I'm not sure on how to restore it if you had made the image from Ghost. If you used the Vista Complete PC Backup feature, then this tutorial below will show you how to restore it.

Restore Complete Computer

Hope this helps,
Shawn

I have Windows XP Ultimate Edition, and I've been unable to start my computer or get into my desktop. I came across this tutorial since you recommended it in this thread and his/her problem seemed to be similar to mine. I've read through the tutorial, but there is one major problem. I'm unable to get into my desktop through safe mode or through any other method, which doesn't allow me to do an Upgrade Install!

I've tried everything mentioned in this thread: chkdisk /f /r, going through Startup Repair multiple times, and attempting to boot from the CD that came with it, even though I didn't run it through Windows. Regardless of what I've tried, nothing seems to be working.

A clean install would be horrible for me, and it would be the ABSOLUTE last option that I would like to have. If there is any way whatsoever in getting the files that are on my desktop, that would be immensely helpful. I've read in the post above (or two posts above) that somebody took their files and put it on an external hard drive. That would be fine for me, as long as I have the files on my desktop. I cannot stress this more: these files are of the utmost importance! I've indeed learnt my lesson about backing up frequently, and hope that this problem never happens again. If there is anyway that you or anybody here could help me with my problem, I would be entirely grateful.

Thanks Shawn and others,
Spencer


P.S. I have the full edition, not an upgraded one.

Hello Spencer, and welcome to Vista Forums.

I assume that you meant Vista Ultimate and not Windows XP Ultimate Edition.

Are you able to boot into Safe Mode at all? If so, see if you can manually copy the files from the C:\Users\(user name)\Desktop folder to a DVD, or other form of backup.

If you are not able to boot into Safe Mode at all, then you might consider plugging your hard drive into another computer to see if you can access the C:\Users\(user name)\Desktop folder from within that other computer's Vista.