Vista - I broke Vista in an unusual way

Before I say how this happened here's how the broken system acts. When I
turn the computer on (it's an HP pavillion DV2000 laptop) it first shows the
black screen with the little bar that says MICROSOFT CORPORATION near the
bottom of the screen. Then it transitions to the Vista screen that says
WELCOME , then the message changes to PREPARING YOUR DESKTOP. These phases
take about as long as usual, and the hard drive LED shows a lot of hard
drive activity. Finally the Vista logon screen is displayed. I type in my
password and the screen changes to my usual desktop color but there is
nothing displayed except the mouse pointer. There is nothing to click,
nothing to do. Ctrl+Alt+Del gives the usual menu for LOGOFF, Task Manager,
etc. Task Manager shows about 20 processes and the CPU is 96% idle. It
shows many services - some of them stopped.

Starting in SAFE mode ends up in the same situation. I can't start from a
Vista CD because I never got one with this machine - I have only the
recovery partition for reloading the original software. So I can't get to
recovery console.

Here's what I was doing immediately before it broke. I was making back up
copies of the system partition and the recovery partition by booting with a
Norton Ghost 2003 CD and running the DOS based GHOST.EXE from the CD. I
created both of the partitions on an external Western Digital Passport drive
with USB cable. I also copied the partitions on a large size older external
USB drive. In the course of creating the partitions I walked away while the
computer was rebooting and it tried to reboot from a copied partition on the
USB drive. That is because the CD/DVD drive wasn't set as the default boot
device - the USB had higher boot priority. The BIOS tried booting from the
USB drive and the Vista partition on that drive apparently didn't like the
situation and decided to start repairing itself automatically. (I never
thought it would start trying to repair without asking me !!!). When I came
back to the computer the Vista on the USB drive was trying to repair
itself.. I could tell it was the USB drive because the LED for the internal
IDE drive wasn't blinking at all - though the screen showed Vista was doing
a repair process. What is apparently causing the problem I have now is that
the Vista on the USB drive changed something on the internal drive.

I haven't tried restoring the system from the backup partitions I made. I
would like to try restoring the system on the internal drive just as it is ,
if that is possible - just to see if I can do it. I have a WinPE CD that I
made and also I can boot from a floppy with NTFS capability.

Maybe someone here can tell me what got broken in the Vista on my internal
drive - and possibly can tell me how to go about fixing it.

TIA.

"Emerald Saint" <xp.student@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:MM2dnXKUU8tnRILVnZ2dnUVZ_hudnZ2d@xxxxxxthephasesmyManager,adriveexternalthethebootcameinternaldoingthat,I

There are a number of ways to do so...
but before you do anything else...you should back up your data...
even if you have to put your drive into another machine to copy it off...
the data backup must be done first.

Then I'd try to restore the machine from your own backup...
being careful not to touch your recovery partition.

If the back up you made is corrupted...then
as a final resort, use the mfg's backup partition...

Hopefully that was not destroyed in the process
but if it was, then you need to contact HP .

When you open the task manager, select run new task and type in explorer.
Then see what drive letter is assigned to the Vista partition.
--
Paul


"Emerald Saint" wrote:

Thanks for the tip - but too late - now I completely broke it.

It got so it wasn't booting at all - just a cursor on black screen. So I
decided the MBR had got a problem too. I looked at the MBR with a disk
editor and there was something in there I never seen before - it had a
message embedded in it that said:

Hit F11 for system recovery - something like that.

So I copied that MBR and wrote a Win XP MBR over it and tried to boot with
that. The MBR code runs but it doesn't get any farther than that. So I
went to copy the original MBR back in - and Idiscoveref I had lost it.

So I got tired of tinkering around and decided to use the recovery DVD I
made when I bought the laptop.

It boots with that DVD, then loads files for a few minutes, then displays a
message:

THIS PC IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE RECOVERY DISKS.

So I thought it sees the XP boot sector and decides recovery isn't
supported. So I zero-filled all the boot code in the MBR - I left the
partition table alone. But that didn't change anything. It still says the
recovery DVD isn't supported. Also I don't have F11 capability because I
lost that MBR - damn!

I need to find a copy of that MBR somewhere.



"PaulB" <PaulB@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3298FE11-1436-4F1E-95CD-E20C6CA9A0E0@xxxxxx

"Emerald Saint" <xp.student@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:LP-dnTVdOIZcr7zVnZ2dnUVZ_ramnZ2d@xxxxxx
What you need to do is to attach your drive to another computer, save
whatever important files you have on it, place it back into your machine,
and then, as it boots, press F11 which will take you into OEM recovery
mode..

Then follow the on screen instructions..

--
Mike Hall - MVP
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http://dts-l.com/goodpost.htm
How to use the Microsoft Product Support Newsgroups..
http://support.microsoft.com/default...help&style=toc
Mike's Window - My Blog..
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/default.aspx