Failed reinstallations of Vista from HP OEM recovery partition

[ts3433]

I've been searching for quite a while across the Web but can't figure out how to resolve this.

My uncle has a ~3-year-old Compaq running Vista Home Premium on which I've just upgraded the memory (2x512MB to 1x2GB). I'm also trying to reinstall Vista from the recovery partition (no DVD included), but this doesn't seem to be working at all. After the recovery program indicates that it's finished and I restart the computer, the new installation hangs at various places at which I can't boot into a normal desktop and have it work successfully. This has occurred once on the "Please wait while Windows prepares to start for the first time" screen, a few times on the Welcome screen with a frozen spinning wait cursor, and a few times within one minute of reaching the default desktop (usually when the HP Flash intro starts; this is also accompanied by a complete freeze that won't respond to Ctrl-Alt-Del and sometimes disintegrates into graphical artifacts, or my latest attempt which has triggered a spontaneous reboot).

I can boot into Safe Mode, but so far I've been unsuccessful figuring out what I might try disabling in order to boot normally. I'm also unable to remove all the bloatware that's installed by default, which is annoying. I have run chkdsk from Safe Mode on the Recovery partition, which returns no errors.

I appreciate any ideas. Thanks.

 

[Kekewy]

My guess would be a corrupted recovery partition. I'd try calling HP and getting the recovery disks. If those don't work, then it could be a bad hard drive. You can get the disks for about 30 bucks, as new as the machine is, they'll still offer them.

 

[ts3433]

Yeah, that's what I'd been fearing as well despite getting the clear from chkdsk. Somehow I've managed to restore again, though, and despite it initially hanging on the Sidebar, I seem to be able to use it enough to run Windows Update now. I can't tell exactly what may have done that--editing autostart in Sidebar's settings.ini to false, changing a BIOS setting that for some reason was set to PCI instead of onboard video (it's an onboard GeForce 6150 SE), or using the original RAM for now. (I don't know why this Kingston ValueRAM wouldn't work, as I seemed to have no problems even running mixed modules totaling 2.5GB in Ubuntu's live CD or in Windows the brief time I used it before reinstalling for other reasons.)

I'll check the hard disk again too, but if I replace that it seems I might open another can-of-worms with the recovery method... something about the disk being "tattooed" for the purposes of the HP recovery software.

So I'll stand by while this rural Internet connection downloads updates for hours... if it fails again, perhaps I'll have to have him order the recovery disc. Thanks.

 

[Kekewy]

I've popped several new hard drives in HP machines and never had a problem with their tattoos. Now, you swap out the the mother board and you get all kinds of fun issues. Dell on the other hand is a pain in the tail about that. Upgraded more HPs than I can count, OS went on without a hitch each time. Upgrade the HD in a dell, it screams for a tattoo.
Good luck with your updates. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

 

[Raduque]

It was probably using the original ram that let you boot into Windows. I'm betting the ram you installed simply doesn't play well with that motherboard. Did you try running a memtest before anything else? Oh, and the Graphics adaptor setting in the BIOS likely wouldn't affect it - it would simply make the computer look at the PCI slot first and then finding no GPU there, it would naturally fall back to the onboard.

 

[Fardringle]

I agree with Raduque. Unless you replaced the RAM because you had reason to believe that it was bad, put the old RAM back in and install Windows. Then proceed with the RAM upgrade if Windows installs properly (and you confirm that the new RAM is actually compatible with the system).

 

[Gunbuster]

check crucial.com to see if that model can even support a 2gig stick.