Failed Vista install boot problem

September 17, 2007 12:39 PM

I tried to install Vista but the install failed. Now when my PC boots I have to jump through some hoops to get it working. Help!

When booting it presents me the following options:
* An earlier version of Windows
* Windows Setup Rollback

It automatically chooses the second option which fails, but gives me a chance to go back to the previous menu and choose to load an earlier version of Windows (which works fine)

Here is a video of the boot process

Ive given up on installing Vista for now. But would love to remove these option screens so that I can boot normally again.

posted by lemonfridge to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Kinda IT Crowd reply here, but I'd just try to install Vista again... Is it a Vista update from XP or a stand alone Vista that doesn't need XP at all? (Though if I remember correctly, Vista is pretty much always the full version and you only use your XP code to verify that you're updating rather installing a completely new system.)

If that doesn't work, you can always format the hard drive completely and then install Vista on a 'clean' machine without a previous operating system...
posted by slimepuppy at 2:34 PM on September 17, 2007

Response by poster: I was installing it onto my 2nd HDD, which is why I think it failed. I wanted to dual-boot to test it out. I guess it didn't like my drive as during the install it popped up with a message that it was unable to locate the partition and that it could not install.

The drive is an IDE drive with a converter to connect it to a SATA connection. It doesn't appear to have installed any files on the drive.

All I want to do now is get rid of this message/option window :(
posted by lemonfridge at 3:51 PM on September 17, 2007

If I recall correctly, Windows needs to be installed on the boot drive or it gets upset (even if it's on a non-boot partition, I think it needs to be on the boot drive to function properly. Don't quote me on that, though.)

If you want to get rid of that menu, I suggest that you read this article with MS support. I had a similar problem once (failed XP install, though that time was an upgrade on the same drive) and editing boot.ini (which you'll find in C:\) got rid of the menu option.

The sysdm.cpl file that that article mentions is a graphical interface to editing that file.
posted by Kosh at 9:28 AM on September 18, 2007