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Vista Installation Issues

A

Aqua_Geek

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 21, 2002
Messages
226
Over the weekend, I decided to give Vista a try. I have 2 SATA drives in my NF7-S 2.0 machine, so I figured I'd throw it on the second one and leave my XP intact. When I booted from the DVD, it got to the "Press any key to boot from CD/DVD" prompt but no matter how many keys I mashed down it did absolutely nothing. So, I figured I'd try running the installer from within XP. I had to provide the Si3112 driver to the installer so it would recognize my HDs, but it copied all the files and extracted them just fine. Upon rebooting to perform the installation, it threw an error (man I wish I would've written down the code...) and said the installation could not be completed because a file was missing or something like that.

OK, so now my computer is dead. Every time it boots, it tries to boot into the failed Vista installation. I get a screen asking what I want to do (ie "Safe mode"/etc), but it still won't accept anything I hit on my keyboard. It then boots to a command prompt window on top of the default installer background.

Any thoughts/ideas/suggestions on how to recover it? From the little bit of research I was able to do (internet connection was being spotty) I think the problem might be with the USB keyboard (WTF??) or maybe the NIC.

Getting Vista working, however, is not that important to me. I'm more interested in how I get XP back up. How do I tell the comp to boot from the other HD? Sorry if this is a pretty basic question - I'm more of an OS X guy.
 
Boot off your XP disc, and go into the Recovery Console. Try running fixboot and fixmbr. Reboot. If this doesn't work, again boot from your XP CD and run a full repair install. Once you can boot back to XP, rerun Windows Update, and you're fixed.
 
OK, I grabbed an XP SP2 installation disc, but when I try to boot off it, it does the same thing - "Press any key to boot from CD..." No matter how many times I mash my keyboard, it doesn't recognize a single keystroke. I just find this weird, seeing as I can hit [del] a few seconds earlier to get into the BIOS. Why does it not want to recognize my USB keyboard after that??

Other than running to Frys to grab a frickin PS/2 keyboard, anyone got any suggestions?
 
Since you can get into the BIOS, make sure your USB settings are correct. You could also try other USB ports for the hell of it. On top of that, it's always a good idea to have a PS/2 keyboard sitting around for these type things.
 
The BIOS was set for USB keyboard support via the OS. I switched it to be via BIOS and it worked like a charm.
 
Just when you think you're out of the woods...

The XP installer does not recognize my SATA drives (and therefore will not let me do a fixmbr on them) and will only allow you to load drivers via the floppy drive (which I also do not have)...
 
How did you get the drivers loaded during the initial install? I'm not trying to push you to Vista, but Vista would have the drivers included already. If not, you're probably going to have to dig a floppy drive out and use it for the time being.
 
During the initial intall, the drivers were loaded from a floppy, hanging half out of the case. =) That was 7 months ago. And 1000 miles away.

Vista was actually what started this whole issue, but I was 2 steps ahead of you. I finally got the Vista DVD to boot, but alas even the Vista installer does not recognize the drives. Nor does it include the driver. Good thing CDs are cheap.
 
That may be the first chipset I've heard of that doesn't have Vista drivers included. Anyway, Vista does allow you to load them from other sources, such as a USB Thumb Drive.
 
DeaconFrost said:
That may be the first chipset I've heard of that doesn't have Vista drivers included. Anyway, Vista does allow you to load them from other sources, such as a USB Thumb Drive.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, the NF7-S uses the Si3112 controller. (I thought it was fairly common... but maybe not). My thumb drive is having issues ATM, but a good ol' fashoned CD-R did the trick. Hopefully the installation won't die like it did last time.
 
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