I'm trying to fix a friends computer. It has vista home premium. She cant stand vista (neither can I) and I was just going to put xp on it. Problem is that there are file system and .dll errors out the ***. Nothing opens/runs. Windows starts up and I can logon, but other than that it's crippled. A file system error shows up for everything I try to run/open. When I tried to boot from the CD there are 4 "unkown devices" found where it would normally show your HDD and partitions and file sizes. So I press Enter to install windows and a blue screen comes up with a settupdd.sys error every time. I can open task manager and all the processes and services check out fine. Any ideas?

Same **** in safe mode btw. Basically everything is corrupt.

 

shut off the pc. put the disk in, and press anykey when prompted, do a fresh install from boot up not from windows..

 

+1

+10 for buying a Mac and dual-booting that bitch!

 

Read where I talk about booting from the cd... It loads the drivers but gets stuck when no hard drive/os is found to install on/delete/create new partition. The hard drive is not recognized in the list where an operating system/partitions would be shown. It says "unknown device". The hdd is connected and on. Like I said, windows starts, but nothing works/executes. Seems like all windows system dll and exe files are corrupt. I cant open computer, control panel, etc. If I put in a cd it recognizes it put wont execute. I'm thinking the hard drive is done.

 

Kick it?

 

I can get her a 250gb sata hard drive for $40. I think I'll try that. Even if it's fixable which I don't see how thats possible since its freakin crippled in every way, $40 is worth the time.

 

that's really weird.. Do you have the disk that came with it you can go into recovery mode and attempt to re write the system files

 

Vista is set up so you can not just re-install XP. They are trying to make it so you can't go backwards anymore. You have to have take the drive out put it in another computer (running XP) and then reformat that drive. You need to do a FULL REFORMAT meaning zeroing out the whole drive (you might need a partition/reformat utility). After that you can do a fresh install from the XP disk.


But just for the fun of it.... "BUY A MAC AND DUAL BOOT THAT B!TCH!" HAHA

Josh

 

She doesn't have the vista disc. She bought this computer from an individual.

 

Thanks for the info. This is a sata drive and my xp desktop uses ata or else I'd try that!