Vista Problems on HP dv6500

[etnietering]

Hi all,

My friend gave me the task of fixing her computer when it stopped working properly. I narrowed it down to the hard drive, so we ordered a new one, replaced the old one, the new one passes the BIOS diagnostics, so all is fine and dandy.

Sort of...

She found the HP system recovery disk which installs Vista Home Premium back on the computer. So it loads the image back on to the hard drive (partitions 24GB to install vista on, leaving 274 unused, what an idiot), and then proceeds to reboot about a dozen times before things appear to be usable. However, some HP program (called FBIGUImanager or something similar) comes up and has to install all of the HP garbage (drivers, norton, vongo, etc). This also reboots the computer many times. Part way through, however, it comes up with a little window that says something along the lines of "recovery failed." I hit ok and the window closes, and the computer shuts down. When I turn it back on it starts up the recovery software again (although I don't know where it gets that, I take the DVD out and explicitly told it NOT to install a recovery partition - oh well), but has an error, and just sits there rebooting over and over again, each time having the same error. This has happened more than once, so it wasn't a fluke (it's doing it again right now - that's why I can't be more specific).

She, for reasons beyond my comprehension, really likes Vista, and won't let me install XP, and I don't have a Vista disk, so I'm stuck with this one.

Has anybody else had similar issues? Has anybody else been able to fix it? Or know what I could/should do differently do make it work?

The system is a HP dv6500
not sure of the system specs - it's doing the vista install thing

Any help/advice anybody could give would be muchly appreciated!
Thanks!

[BipolarBill]

Did you install SP1 at any point?

The recovery usually copies the i386 folder to the hard drive. You can try copying that folder to another drive and running a command to start it there. It would be the same as a clean install.

[etnietering]

I did nothing to the computer before the hard drive went south, and the disk is pre SP1, so I'm pretty sure it isn't trying to install SP1. I have never given it the encryption code for my wireless, so there is no way it could have silently downloaded it by itself.

The problem occurs as it's installing all of the garbage from HP. Once it fails again this time I'll throw the disk in another computer and see what I can do with it.

Thanks.

[Whir]

Just out of curiosity, have you tried installing XP on it just to see if it will load up. Confirm that there's not still a hardware problem at least.

Perhaps it's running that 24GB partition out of space? Vista takes up a good chunk. I have no idea how HP's garbage could take up that much more, but...

If it's not the hardware and she wants to stick with Vista (I don't blame her, I hate XP after learning Vista ), she might want to think about popping for a non-HP copy of Home Premium or something. That's what I did for my HP laptop (dv6775us) and it's a lot less of a pain in the butt. I also don't have to deal with any of HP's garbage. I just downloaded the drivers from them and installed them manually and it runs beautifully.

[etnietering]

Good point. I had forgotten about the partition thing. Vista by itself (before HP did anything) was over 17GB, and with all of the crap HP puts on, that's likely. I'll boot into Partition Magic and see if I can fix things.

I haven't tried installing XP, but I have run several Linux Live CD's which all worked fine. They would not run into problems with a hard drive malfunction though.

It just crapped out again - gives me a blue screen with a command prompt on it, and a window that comes up that says "The recovery attempt has failed. Please select one of the following buttons:" and has 'Details' and 'Retry'

In details, it opens notepad, and there's a 'log' (a bad one) of what happened - and the thing that failed says: "TimedOut1:[20:44:40.047] WARNING-=-Timeout with setup.exe" then the next one says "[TimeOutCheck] RESULT = FAILED"

The computer does have a Vista Home Premium key on the bottom, and I think my buddy's dad just built a computer with Vista. If I can't get this to work I'll ask him if I can borrow it.

Thanks

OH and this is why I build my own computers.....

[etnietering]

OK well interesting thing happened...
I fire up PM, and it says 'ERROR #105' so I can't do anything. So then I fire up Partition Table Doctor (AMAZING program, by the way), and it finds a bunch of errors, which I fix. Then I decide, while I'm at it, to have it check the partition table and fix errors. Takes 10 minutes (I've never had it take longer than about 5 seconds). But I fix it, and then boot up partition magic again. There are 2660MB of open space on the 24GB partition, so that can't be the problem (unless Vista really is that bad with file storage), but I'm expanding it anyways.

If it works, I'll probably lose my mind (you shouldn't be expected to have to rebuild the partition table just to get the dumb thing installed), and if it doesn't work, I might just install linux mint for a while, so that I have something nice to look at.

Needless to say, I won't be recommending HP to anybody ever again.....

[etnietering]

OK, well, I expanded the partition just fine. Rebooted, and up comes vista. woo-hoo. 20 seconds later, up comes a thing saying 'new hardware installed, you must reboot your computer for it to work'. so I guess when you change the partition size (that it's running on, no less) it has to re install it. anyways, rebooted....and.....it can't find it. Fire up partition table doctor again, a ton of errors, fix them, boots up again, runs for about 2 minutes, shuts down, starts up again, can't find the operating system.

awesome

so I threw in my XP disk, and it is saying that it can't find any hard disks. So i load up partition table doctor again, and it finds errors, and fixes them, i boot back into XP, and it still can't find it. So I fire up partition magic again, wipe the drive, and try again. still can't....unfortunately I don't have the packaging that would have any SATA controller software in it.

so, on to Linux Mint....

[BipolarBill]

Altering any partitions on a pre-configured PC will usually bung up the restore function.

[Whir]

Most of the time, those recovery disks manipulate the partition table themselves, I thought. At least that's how all the ones we ever had at work did it.


BTW, the key on her laptop won't work with a non-HP OEM version of Home Premium. I did the same thing when I first got mine and borrowed a friend's retail disc. Nope! Had to buy my own. But it saved me so much hassle in the end that I didn't mind the extra $130. Not to mention the freedom to do whatever I want with the machine rather than relying on HP's junk.

[etnietering]

Yeah I know messing with partitions can cause problems, but it's hard not to when you install a new hard drive which has no partitions on it.......I don't know why the dumb HP recovery thing would only partition off 24GB. The worst part is that there are zero options. It just does it. Even if you have an already formatted, but blank, NTFS partition. The stupidity of some people/companies amazes me.....

Thanks for the info about the keys - I figure I'll try it anyways, but not really expect it to work. I'm sure she doesn't want to spend money on another copy of Vista, but maybe a call to MS would do me good......it has before....

Linux Mint installed without a hitch. Only problems are the sound and webcam don't work, but with a little tinkering I should be able to get them running. One of my other laptops with Linux Mint didn't have sound for the first week, but then it started working.

Sorry for ranting so much before.....I was a little bit unhappy >_<

Thanks for all your help everybody