Vista - install failed,rollback failed

I installed RC1 with online updates on my dell 700m laptop and it got all the
way through to completing install, then I guess it tried to load Aero or
something and just went blank. I forced a reboot and it said rolling back to
previous operating system. I then gave it another try without online
updates. This did almost the same thing, took a bit longer ( about 2 hours)
and then the display went blank again. Forced reboot after about 12 hours of
waiting, tried to rollback and failed. Now I have a cmd prompt and nothing
else. It appears that the rollback was removed (windows.old not there?) and
that the install log shows it copied stuff from $windows~bt to \windows so
i'm guessing I have no way to rollback. I fooled with bcdedit and got it to
try to load into the /windows dir but it still thinks it is in an install and
tells me to reboot and reinstall. There is no option to continue the install
which was an upgrade, and the upgrade option is gone for me now. should I
just buy a notebook ide adapter and pull any files off that drive and give up
on the possibility of the upgrade/install completing? Is there a registry
key somewhere that i can set so it thinks the install is complete?

Ok, well i figured out that I could go into \$Windows.BT\Sources and run
setup.exe which looked like it was continuing the install however now I no
longer can boot into the "Windows Setup Rollback" which was setup to use the
winload.exe in the $Windows.BT.

Does anyone know what the BCD boot looks like for the setup routine? if I
boot to the Vista one it just loads the OS and says in need to reboot to
complete the install, but that is a loop.

I also found a UnattendGC dir in the panther dir which says that setup.exe
has a false flag

Windeploy.exe launched with command-line []...
Setup has not completed, adding pending reboot.
Found no unattend file.
Found generalization state [0x7], setup.exe completion flag [False] -->
launching setup.exe
Launching c:\windows\system32\oobe\setup.exe
setup.exe failed returning exit code [0x1f]
Failure occured during online installation. Online installation cannot
complete at this time.
Flusing registry....
flush took blabla
WinDeploy.exe exited with code [0x800004005]

Is this a path problem? my BCD has the path as X:

Any ideas or guesses are welcome. It seems to be close to installed,
however it can't get past that false flag.



"jds" wrote:

> I installed RC1 with online updates on my dell 700m laptop and it got all the
> way through to completing install, then I guess it tried to load Aero or
> something and just went blank. I forced a reboot and it said rolling back to
> previous operating system. I then gave it another try without online
> updates. This did almost the same thing, took a bit longer ( about 2 hours)
> and then the display went blank again. Forced reboot after about 12 hours of
> waiting, tried to rollback and failed. Now I have a cmd prompt and nothing
> else. It appears that the rollback was removed (windows.old not there?) and
> that the install log shows it copied stuff from $windows~bt to \windows so
> i'm guessing I have no way to rollback. I fooled with bcdedit and got it to
> try to load into the /windows dir but it still thinks it is in an install and
> tells me to reboot and reinstall. There is no option to continue the install
> which was an upgrade, and the upgrade option is gone for me now. should I
> just buy a notebook ide adapter and pull any files off that drive and give up
> on the possibility of the upgrade/install completing? Is there a registry
> key somewhere that i can set so it thinks the install is complete?

I also found a \windows\Setup\State dir with a State.ini that says:

ImageState=Image_State_Specialize_Reseal_to_OOBE

i moved this to state.ini.old and it was recreated...
"jds" wrote:

> Ok, well i figured out that I could go into \$Windows.BT\Sources and run
> setup.exe which looked like it was continuing the install however now I no
> longer can boot into the "Windows Setup Rollback" which was setup to use the
> winload.exe in the $Windows.BT.
>
> Does anyone know what the BCD boot looks like for the setup routine? if I
> boot to the Vista one it just loads the OS and says in need to reboot to
> complete the install, but that is a loop.
>
> I also found a UnattendGC dir in the panther dir which says that setup.exe
> has a false flag
>
> Windeploy.exe launched with command-line []...
> Setup has not completed, adding pending reboot.
> Found no unattend file.
> Found generalization state [0x7], setup.exe completion flag [False] -->
> launching setup.exe
> Launching c:\windows\system32\oobe\setup.exe
> setup.exe failed returning exit code [0x1f]
> Failure occured during online installation. Online installation cannot
> complete at this time.
> Flusing registry....
> flush took blabla
> WinDeploy.exe exited with code [0x800004005]
>
> Is this a path problem? my BCD has the path as X:
>
> Any ideas or guesses are welcome. It seems to be close to installed,
> however it can't get past that false flag.
>
>
>
> "jds" wrote:
>
> > I installed RC1 with online updates on my dell 700m laptop and it got all the
> > way through to completing install, then I guess it tried to load Aero or
> > something and just went blank. I forced a reboot and it said rolling back to
> > previous operating system. I then gave it another try without online
> > updates. This did almost the same thing, took a bit longer ( about 2 hours)
> > and then the display went blank again. Forced reboot after about 12 hours of
> > waiting, tried to rollback and failed. Now I have a cmd prompt and nothing
> > else. It appears that the rollback was removed (windows.old not there?) and
> > that the install log shows it copied stuff from $windows~bt to \windows so
> > i'm guessing I have no way to rollback. I fooled with bcdedit and got it to
> > try to load into the /windows dir but it still thinks it is in an install and
> > tells me to reboot and reinstall. There is no option to continue the install
> > which was an upgrade, and the upgrade option is gone for me now. should I
> > just buy a notebook ide adapter and pull any files off that drive and give up
> > on the possibility of the upgrade/install completing? Is there a registry
> > key somewhere that i can set so it thinks the install is complete?