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Windows Vista reinstall vista hangs

Discussion in 'Legacy Windows' started by gghartman, 2009/04/17.

  1. 2009/04/17
    gghartman

    gghartman Inactive Thread Starter

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    i give up i need some suggestions. have been trying to reinstall vista home premium back to factory defaults on a dell laptop. have tried 3 times with the same hang results. last time formatted drive on another one of my machines. install gets to the final stage "completing installation" and just sit there. have seen tons of situations on the web but yet to find a solution. have even tried 2 different dell vista dvd's.

    have shut machine down hard way and when it picks up the install it just sits at the logo screen and just spins away.

    help...
     
    gghartman,
    #1
  2. 2009/04/17
    gghartman

    gghartman Inactive Thread Starter

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    would installing xp home premium if it will install and then using the vista home premium dcd inside windows and do an upgrade to vista will that works ???
     
    gghartman,
    #2


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  4. 2009/04/17
    Arie

    Arie Administrator Administrator Staff

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    I'd boot from the Vista DVD & redo the partitioning & reformat the drive.
     
    Arie,
    #3
  5. 2009/04/18
    gghartman

    gghartman Inactive Thread Starter

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    arie

    yep have done that 4 times now. it always seems to die at the same place. it does the copying then expanding the install features and updates all with green check marks then it gets to completing installation and just sits there forever. have waited an hour so i know its hung at that point no way it should take that long. running diags now memory past working on hard drive diags now.
     
    gghartman,
    #4
  6. 2009/04/18
    gghartman

    gghartman Inactive Thread Starter

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    dell diags all came thru just fine but now when i try the vista and try to delete the partition or reformat it i get error failed to create new partition error 0x8004245f which from what i see on the web could mean a bad system board. hopefully being this machine is still under warranty dell will have me box it up and send to them for repair.

    havent so far had to do a lot of vista rebuilds only half dozen or so so far but i gotta say i like the way xp did that process better than vista.
     
    gghartman,
    #5
  7. 2009/04/18
    gghartman

    gghartman Inactive Thread Starter

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    well dell so far has turned me down on this being a warranty issue and i guess being that dells diagnostics all pass i cant blame them. but now what???

    doesnt make sense even tried a newer vista sp1 dvd with same results so in total have tried 3 different vista dvd's all dell and all with the same result on this laptop. ive rebuilt vista desktops with no problem why is this son of a gun giving me problems ???
     
    gghartman,
    #6
  8. 2009/04/18
    Arie

    Arie Administrator Administrator Staff

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    Was this originally a Vista machine or an XP machine?
     
    Arie,
    #7
  9. 2009/04/18
    gghartman

    gghartman Inactive Thread Starter

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    arie

    originally vista home premium.

    here another really weird thing. was able to run dells h.d. diags all okay. thought i would try using dells xp cd and see if it would take xp and the install program comes up immediately and says there is no hard drive to do the install. now what the heck is that all about ??? took drive out of laptop and attached as a usb to one of my other machine and formatting it and the other system sees it as a usb device so why cant the xp see a drive ???

    what the heck is with this laptop ??? gotta love computers huh.
     
    gghartman,
    #8
  10. 2009/04/18
    gghartman

    gghartman Inactive Thread Starter

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    finally a resolution to this problem. finally got a hold of a dell tech who apparently has gone thru this before and knew right away the problem. this machine unknown to me has RAID built in and what the install was looking for was that driver before it could continue. when the dell tech told me where to locate it and install it now the vista install is going where it should be going. thanks to all just chatting with you all makes one feel better.....greg
     
    gghartman,
    #9
  11. 2009/04/18
    wildfire

    wildfire Getting Old

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    @Greg

    It's good to know you've fixed your issue but when listening to IT take everything with just a little pinch of salt. ;)

    @Arie

    I'm sceptical and thinking a tattoo here, but hopefully as usual you'll prove me wrong ;)
     
    wildfire,
    #10
  12. 2009/04/18
    gghartman

    gghartman Inactive Thread Starter

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    wildfire

    i hear what your saying but so far the install is going the way it should. finishing up the driver install and then bring up to sp1 and move the data back and pow machine can go back to client.

    honestly this is the first time with a laptop ive seen raid as a factor so i never even considered that as a possibility. i also am skeptical about most everything but being an x IT guy for GE some time back some times you find one person that really knows there stuff sorta like what i always find on this web site. you all rock.....greg
     
    gghartman,
    #11
  13. 2009/04/19
    Arie

    Arie Administrator Administrator Staff

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    Well, most likely it isn't RAID, but just the need for a SATA driver to be installed. Usually this can be avoided by disabling SATA AHCI mode in your BIOS (can have different names like 'native sata support') but not every bios has this option.
     
    Arie,
    #12
  14. 2009/04/20
    gghartman

    gghartman Inactive Thread Starter

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    arie

    yep thats the driver it found intel ahci and yep dell also told me i could have just disabled it in the bios.

    so is this just a laptop thing ??? ive rebuilt a number of vistas with sata drives desktops and have not encountered this before. this laptop was unique in that it had the ability to have 2 h.d.'s.
     
    gghartman,
    #13
  15. 2009/04/20
    Arie

    Arie Administrator Administrator Staff

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    No, desktop computers also have this BIOS option, but the default is mostly set as IDE.

    FYI, if you set the option to use IDE, your SATA drive would work as a PATA, thus probably slower.

    AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) allows the advanced SATA features to be used.
     
    Arie,
    #14
  16. 2009/04/21
    gghartman

    gghartman Inactive Thread Starter

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    arie

    i have noticed on some sata drive that the bios is set to be ide. your explanation fills in the gap. thanks.
     
    gghartman,
    #15

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