Vista Tutorial - Windows could not update the computer's boot configuration

After a great deal of searching, I am still unable to find a resolution to
this. I am upgrading WindowsXP to Vista Business...well, at least trying to.
Have tried a number of times now after making various changes and still no
joy. Have tried the registry fix with PartMgr (but it did not need to be
fixed in the first place).

At this point, I am ready to put Vista back in the box as it does not seem
to be ready for prime time just yet. Any suggestions or ideas? Please do not
refer me to the PartMgr fix. I have tried this and it is not a solution.

Thanks in advance...

Kevin

Kevin,

Have you tried uninstalling any software that Windows Upgrade Advisor
suggests is incaptible with Vista? You know, programs like Nero, security
software, various utility programs. Did you make certain you have all the
latest updates from Microsoft for your current WinXP? Do you have enough
disk space? To avoid external hardware from causing problems, you may simply
want to try your installation with just your monitor, keyboard and mouse.

"Kevin" wrote:

> After a great deal of searching, I am still unable to find a resolution to
> this. I am upgrading WindowsXP to Vista Business...well, at least trying to.
> Have tried a number of times now after making various changes and still no
> joy. Have tried the registry fix with PartMgr (but it did not need to be
> fixed in the first place).
>
> At this point, I am ready to put Vista back in the box as it does not seem
> to be ready for prime time just yet. Any suggestions or ideas? Please do not
> refer me to the PartMgr fix. I have tried this and it is not a solution.
>
> Thanks in advance...
>
> Kevin
>
>
>

"Ed Stoddard" <EdStoddard@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:EA25FB90-760D-4008-BBD4-4C7ADA5425CA@microsoft.com...
> Kevin,
>
> Have you tried uninstalling any software that Windows Upgrade Advisor
> suggests is incaptible with Vista? You know, programs like Nero, security
> software, various utility programs. Did you make certain you have all the
> latest updates from Microsoft for your current WinXP? Do you have enough
> disk space? To avoid external hardware from causing problems, you may
> simply
> want to try your installation with just your monitor, keyboard and mouse.
>

Hi Ed, thanks for your response.

This is a lab system and is dual boot with XP Pro on each drive. There are
two 80GB drives. I have 1GB of RAM. The target drive (D) is a skeleton
system that I set up from scratch and was newly formatted to do the
install/upgrade and is XP Pro with all the latest patchware from MS and
nothing else. It has IE7 and Windows Live Messenger but otherwise it is all
current XP updates. The setup logs are very lengthy but I don't know how to
read them so I don't quite understand the INFO lines in the logs. Disk space
is plentiful as the existing OS takes up about 9GB out of about 76GB
available.

I do have other hardware installed including a scanner which the advisor
says will not work. Had not occurred to me to remove it; good idea. The
other hardware is the printer. I also have a PCI card for USB and Firewire
which could be removed but there is no indication it is not compatible but I
will try removing it anyway.

I have checked the BIOS and there are is no AV software that can be modified
or deleted. I checked with Dell and the BIOS is at the latest level and
there is nothing to indicate that they are going to release another rev.

I saw on another post looking at permissions. I ran the upgrade as
administrator but I will double check it in that boot.

Appreciate the good ideas and will try them out. Will let you know tomorrow
or so how things pan out.

Kevin

Kevin wrote:
> After a great deal of searching, I am still unable to find a resolution to
> this. I am upgrading WindowsXP to Vista Business...well, at least trying to.
> Have tried a number of times now after making various changes and still no
> joy. Have tried the registry fix with PartMgr (but it did not need to be
> fixed in the first place).
>
> At this point, I am ready to put Vista back in the box as it does not seem
> to be ready for prime time just yet. Any suggestions or ideas? Please do not
> refer me to the PartMgr fix. I have tried this and it is not a solution.
>
> Thanks in advance...
>
> Kevin
>
>
Corrupt boot.ini

Can you try this. I know it says XP but the steps should be the same
You can enter command prompt by booting to dvd and entering shift+F10
after you select language and hit next.

> Corrupt boot.ini
>
> Can you try this. I know it says XP but the steps should be the same You
> can enter command prompt by booting to dvd and entering shift+F10 after
> you select language and hit next.

Well, what a long strange trip, as someone once said...

I physically changed the hard drive order in the computer so that Drive C
became ID 1 and Drive D became ID 0. Ran bootfix and fixmbr. Booted from a
vanilla WinXPSP2. Ran Vista Clean Install (planning to the upgrade after the
clean install came up...uh huh, right). So I think there was something wrong
with Drive C but what it is, I don't know at this point.

From there Vista and I vista'ed The Land of Many Boots and slow boots at
that. Eventually, Vista started but then failed and started and failed...So,
I went to Safe Mode and then restarted. It came up but with no access. Could
not log into Administrator or my own account. They were disabled. Now how
strange is that! So I restarted back into safe mode and went to services:
users and groups and had to enable administrator and my own account.
Rebooted and got into the system well, at least what was a very bare bones
system. IE 7 was working but there was no desktop service enabled. I went
and enabled everything that was supposed to start automatically but no joy.
So I got on the net and went to ATI to at least download the Vista display
drivers. They downloaded and I navigated the download to the folder I wanted
and tried to start it. It started but Vista would not allow it to run
because of security. Same thing with Logitech. Both companies had Vista
drivers but I could not run the exe's. I know there is a way to fix that but
I could not think of it at the time.

At that point, I gave up. I was already way behind on some things. And it
built my character up some more. I needed that, y'know.

Man, this thing is really half baked. After all this time, it really seems
like it was rushed out the door. Odd thing was once I had the skeleton Vista
installed it was responding really well. Probably because there was not much
loaded...LOLLOL.

Anyway, for now, Redmond has me beat. But I'll be back...probably with SP1,
though.

Thanks for all the suggestions.