Solved After SP1 PC wouldn't boot - now kinda solved

[david2]

Hi,

Thanks to all the folks on this forum for sharing their experiences and ESPECIALLY to the dude who posted the recovery disk ISO.

I had two failed SP1 installs; got to 100% then said "Service Pack did not install. reverting changes" - that was from Windows Update, second attempt was from a manual download of the all languages file (the failure message was slightly different - it was "Updates were not configured correctly. Reverting changes".)

OK so far. Now update says I should have KB938371 (which MS say fixes SP1 install problems). I click ok and it reboots and hey presto - Vista suicide! PC won't boot. The problem was a missing winload.exe with error 0x00000f (IIRC). Luckily I have Linux installed (bless Linus Torvalds), so I download your iso, boot that and try the repair function. Doesn't work - says "Disk corrupt". Also no copy of Vista is found so can't go back to a restore point (probably because one of my Linux partitions is the active one which runs a boot manager). After a few attempts with this and that I try this, and it works. Open a dos command prompt and type:

copy x:\windows\system32\Boot\winload.exe c:\windows\system32\winload.exe

Corrupt disk, eh?

And now my vista works fine, although it still don't have KB938371 (haven't tried it again yet) and SP1 is not installed.

What a mess. M$ one of the richest companies on the planet, should be ashamed of this.

Thanks to all the folks on here.

Regards,
David.

 

[johngalt]

Hi, [email protected], and welcome to the forums.

What makes you think this is *Microsoft's* fault?

 

[david2]

Dear John Gault,

A) Because my system was fine before the upgrade and I haven't touched anything on the system or installed anything, other than clicking on the upgrade.
B) Because thousands of other people are reporting the same or similar problems with SP1.

What makes you think it isn't their fault?

Regards,
David.

 

[johngalt]

Because SP1 is causing problems *primarily* with poorly written *drivers* from manufacturers.

 

[david2]

My system works generally OK without SP1. I have issues with the file explorer crashing sometimes and the "host processes" process dies sometimes, but it seems to work ok. If the drivers are poor (I have a top-end Sony laptop so it's unlikely in my case) but they work without SP1 why should the addition of SP1 make so much of a difference? Why should my system fail to boot afterwards? That's kind of a big problem with the upgrade process.

 

[johngalt]

OK, a couple of things to consider.

1. First of all, all the hardware in your high end SONY laptop is not *made* by Sony. Hence, Sony is not going to be responsible for the drivers that it has installed on its machine when you buy it - as the end user, *you* are responsible for maintenance on it, much the same way you are with your car.
2. The point of SP1 and drivers not playing nicely is exactly that - SP1 changes things that older drivers do not like being changed - hence you need newer drivers. Just because you bought the machine yesterday does not mean it has the latest drivers that have been written to fix things like incompatibilities for SP1 - you don't know how old the machine really is, nor (more importantly) how old the image is that SONY put on that laptop.

3. I have issues with the file explorer crashing sometimes and the "host processes" process dies sometimes, but it seems to work ok

   - sorry, but that is not working OK. Your machine should not be crashing at all, unless you've installed incompatible software.
4. SP1 changed several hundred files in the OS, I think it was something like 551 total changes to the Vista OS. Why should it make much of a difference? I don't know - but I know that it *does*.

 

[beano4390]

Hi peep's this might not be the right place to put this but maybe you can help!!!!!


i brought a laptop about 5 months ago and i run updates once every week i ran updates the other day and it found vista servic pak 1 (B.T.W i have vista home premium) once the updat had finished it did it's normal windows has to restart to complete update i clicked ok and it started to restart and i went to bed.... when i woke up the next day it was still shutting down but i left it because i no sometimes big updates will take time anyway when i came home from work it had shut down.. the next day i came to start the laptop and i got the vista loading screen then a black back ground with a error code on it (i can't remeber wot it was at the moment cause i not near my laptop but will post it when i can) My computer will not go past this stage anymore so i can't use my laptop... i created a backup disc but can't find it (put it in that safe of a place that i lost it lol) is there anyway of getting a back up disk or a way of getting the computer to run without have to re-buy vista and do a complete new install thanks !!!

 

[david2]

Hi John,

A little late in replying but wanted to follow up here.

1. My point was that when Sony ship a laptop the hardware and drivers supplied should be ok.

2. Fair enough, but it shouldn't render the O/S incabable of booting.

3. I worked out why Explorer was crashing - it was related to ZipGenius (I found this out by clicking on "Debug" on the crash dialog and looking at the stack in Visual Studio). I uninstalled that and the crashes went away. I'm not sure about host processes, that seems to have gone away too (see next point).

4. In the end I opened up a free support ticket with MS, and they tried lots of stuff. Eventually they advised me to reinstall Vista over the top of my existing install and then install SP1. This did the trick. I'm the proud owner of a SP1 Vista.


Thanks,
David.

OK, a couple of things to consider.

1. First of all, all the hardware in your high end SONY laptop is not *made* by Sony. Hence, Sony is not going to be responsible for the drivers that it has installed on its machine when you buy it - as the end user, *you* are responsible for maintenance on it, much the same way you are with your car.
2. The point of SP1 and drivers not playing nicely is exactly that - SP1 changes things that older drivers do not like being changed - hence you need newer drivers. Just because you bought the machine yesterday does not mean it has the latest drivers that have been written to fix things like incompatibilities for SP1 - you don't know how old the machine really is, nor (more importantly) how old the image is that SONY put on that laptop.

3. I have issues with the file explorer crashing sometimes and the "host processes" process dies sometimes, but it seems to work ok

   - sorry, but that is not working OK. Your machine should not be crashing at all, unless you've installed incompatible software.
4. SP1 changed several hundred files in the OS, I think it was something like 551 total changes to the Vista OS. Why should it make much of a difference? I don't know - but I know that it *does*.