Vista upgrade "stuck"

[Pantalica]

Hi, I'm new to this forum and I hope I'm not in the wrong place. I've been running XP Pro Media Center 2005 for about 2 years with no problems. I've decided to upgrade to Vista Ultimate to be compatible with colleagues for Remote Assistance among other things. I checked for compatibilty and made the necessary changes - more memory, new graphics card and a new hard drive, to be on the safe side. Again, everything's running fine in XP, but when I try to upgrade I get as far as Gathering Files 66%, and then the install stalls. There are no error codes. I've tried three times now. The first time I let it run all night. Now I've disconnected everything except the keyboard, mouse and monitor, disabled antivirus software, but it still stops at 66%. I opted not to activate during install. Is there any significance with 66%. Although I've read of ways of performing a clean install with the upgrade version, it sounds a bit fiddly. I'm stuck, and would be grateful of any help. Thanks in advance.

 

[Brink]

re: Vista upgrade "stuck"

Hello Pantalica, and welcome to Vista Forums.

Sometime people just have issues while doing a updrade due to some unknown issue or incompatibility that prevents the upgrade from finishing.

It may be best to go ahead and do a clean install with your upgrade version of Vista to start fresh. Be sure to backup anything that you do not want to lose, and have all of your device drivers for Vista downloaded and ready to go to make setting up Vista easier afterwards.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Pantalica]

re: Vista upgrade "stuck"

Thanks Brink,

I was trying to keep my old settings, etc., but to be honest I've never really liked upgrades, and I had a gut feeling I would have to do a clean install in the end. However, I'm in the UK and it's late so I'll start tomorrow when I'm fresher. I've been on this all day and I'm losing patience. Thanks again.

 

[Brink]

re: Vista upgrade "stuck"

You're welcome. I hope it installs smoothly for you. Please post back if you run into any problems.

 

[Pantalica]

Hi Brink,

Thanks for your encouragement. However, there's one thing I forgot to mention yesterday - it was late. I recently installed Office 2007 on the computer I'm trying to upgrade, and my copy of Office has 2 licences. I want to put one copy onto my laptop after I've put in a bigger drive, and that will use my remaining licence. I'm worried that by doing a clean install and then re-installing my favourite software, including Office, I'll use my second licence and won't be able install Office on my laptop. I'm a student on a limited income and can't afford to make mistakes. I'm sorry I forgot to mention this, and I still agree with your clean install advice, but I'm stuck with the Office 2007 problem unless you can advise me on that. Thanks again.

 

[Brink]

Hello Pantalica,

You shouldn't have a problem reinstalling Office on that computer using the same license number as you had on it before. In your case with Office it doesn't matter what computer you have it installed on, so long as you do not have it installed on more than two computers with the same license.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Pantalica]

Hi Brink,

Thanks for putting me straight about the licences. Now I have another question. Before I attempted my upgrade to Vista Ultimate I copied my XP partition onto another partition on the same drive so I could go back in case I had any problems - I can't afford to be without a working computer. Now, when I boot my computer I'm offered a boot menu including my XP Media Center partition and the cloned installation which has been called XP Pro by the boot manager. Both partitions boot OK, but neither will accept the Upgrade. The Media partition has the problem I've already described, and the cloned partition rejects the upgrade, explaining that there isn't enough memory. I have 2Gb RAM, but this may not be the memory required.

My question is: Do these two partitions count as two computers in terms of licencing? I'm no great fan of what seems to be restricted use of an expensive piece of software as I'm not selling it or pirating it, but the law's the law. I'm only going through these problems because of the horror stories I've read about faulty Vista installs and upgrades. Instinctively I prefer the clean install, but not if it uses both of my available licences. I'm not sure what to do next. Thanks for your time.

 

[Brink]

You're welcome Pantalica.

Yes, they will be considered as two separate installations of XP requiring their own separate product key number.

Vista will have it's own product key number than the one for XP, so Vista will not be affected by the XP number being used.

I would recommend a clean install over a upgrade to avoid any possible issues, but you might also consider dual booting Vista and XP. If your Vista is a upgrade version instead of a full version, then you will need to follow this tutorial when installing Vista as a separate clean installation or to dual boot with.

 

[Pantalica]

Hello Brink,

I'm about to start the Vista clean install routine you've recommended. My computer already dual-boots between my original XP Media partition and the cloned copy partition on the same drive. My intention is to over-write the XP Media partition with the clean install, leaving the cloned copy for safety. I have "My Documents", etc., on a different drive, so I'm not worried about losing my documents. I was expecting the dual-boot setup to remain, so that I could refer to the cloned copy if I have any problems. I've printed out your instructions for both the clean install and the dual-boot, but many of the dual-boot instructions don't apply to my setup as I'm already dual-booting. Do you think the Vista install wiil leave my dual-boot setup still working?

I realise I may be asking a lot, but I've got used to my XP setup, and I can't lose it, just in case something goes wrong. You can probably tell I'm very nervous. Thanks.

 

[Dwarf]

Hi Pantalica,

Hopefully you should have no problems, but you know where we are if you need us to advise you. Please take the opportunity to have a browse of the Forums, and especially the Tutorials - Vista Forums as there is a wealth of information there.

 

[Brink]

If you are installing Vista on the first partition of the drive instead of a separate partition, then it most likely will damage the dual booting with the XP clone. If it does, then you can use step 8 on in METHOD TWO in this tutorial to add XP back to the boot list if you wanted to.

 

[Pantalica]

Hi Brink,

I'm sorry if I got a bit p***** off. All my software is legal, and I don't think you or I should be having to go through this nonsense to get one piece of Microsoft software to work with another. I've just spent good money on rubbish. It's a waste of time. My frustration is with Microsoft - so that's where I'm going next, with no disrespect to you or your colleagues. I want some answers.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Brink]

No disrepect was taken at all. Good luck.

 

[JoyPC]

If Vista is stuck at "Gathering Files 0%", open task mgr (Ctrl+Alt+Del), highlight dllhost.exe and choose "kill process".

This will immediately jump start Setup to gather files and dllhost.exe will restart automatically.

NOW it's solved!

 

[AmadeoV]

If Vista is stuck at "Gathering Files 0%", open task mgr (Ctrl+Alt+Del), highlight dllhost.exe and choose "kill process".

This will immediately jump start Setup to gather files and dllhost.exe will restart automatically.

NOW it's solved!

I am the Senior Systems and Network Engineer for a nationwide company that works in various services, including testing samples from various sources for the presence of specific chemicals, radioactivity, etc.

We had 18 Windows XP PCs 2 months ago. I've gotten all of them but 4 upgraded to Windows Vista and/or Windows 7 at this point. I went for my second try on one of the remaining 4 earlier tonight, and dreaded when I saw that it was stuck at 0% on gathering files again.

I pulled up Ctrl+Alt+Del, started taskmgr.exe, and killed dllhost.exe. The first time, nothing happened. I waited 2 minutes and tried again, and it shot up to 3%. It is currently at 20% and still climbing.

THANK YOU. =)

 

[johngalt]

I am the Senior Systems and Network Engineer for a nationwide company that works in various services, including testing samples from various sources for the presence of specific chemicals, radioactivity, etc.

We had 18 Windows XP PCs 2 months ago. I've gotten all of them but 4 upgraded to Windows Vista and/or Windows 7 at this point. I went for my second try on one of the remaining 4 earlier tonight, and dreaded when I saw that it was stuck at 0% on gathering files again.

I pulled up Ctrl+Alt+Del, started taskmgr.exe, and killed dllhost.exe. The first time, nothing happened. I waited 2 minutes and tried again, and it shot up to 3%. It is currently at 20% and still climbing.

THANK YOU. =)

Glad you got it working - but for your company's sake, you might consider moving those Vista machines on up to Windows 7. Vista is at EOL as of Last April:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/22882

You don't have to move to 10, but 7 would be at least as advisable (plus the fact that it is insanely better at hardware / resource management than Vista ever was).