32 bit Vista SP2 problems

[imported_SLIM]

Yesterday, I had some odd slowdowns on my 32 bit vista sp1 laptop while doing a virus scan (AVG 8.5). In a moment of weakness, I chose to install SP2 to see if it could help things (yes I did back up my docs the day before and SP2 did create a restore point). And no it did not help, quite the contrary... now my computer hangs during vista loading such that I see the mouse over a black screen momentarily and then it goes back to post.

This wouldn't be so bad except every time I pick OS repair from the "it looks like your computer didn't shutdown properly screen", it kicks back to my boot selection screen choosing between my 64 bit win 7 beta install on a separate partition and the now dysfunctional vista install. To make matters worse, my iso of win7 RC is on the vista partition that I now can't seem to see under my win 7 beta install.

So the question is, Is there a way to get vista to go to a prior restore point without an installation disk? My laptop came with a recovery disk which unfortunately simply wants to reformat both HDD partitions and copy the factory default files to the hdd. I would prefer to avoid this route if possible...

Any suggestions?

 

[VinDSL]

I installed and uninstalled various service packs, several betas, SP1, SP2, yada, yada, yada.

One thing I've never understood is, the Windows SP update will give you all sorts of info about which stage (of the update) it's in - it warns you not to turn your computer off during various stages, et cetera, but at some point, the update will "black screen' on you, which usually means Windows has crashed. However, if you just leave everything alone for x-number of minutes, you'll realize that the updater has been doing something in the background the whole time your screen was black.

Through all these updates, I've been tempted to hit the reset button several times during these 'black screen' events, but luckily I didn't succumb.

If I remember correctly, the SP2 install 'black screened' on me for (like) 5 minutes, during the final phase. It was an inordinately l-o-n-g period of time.

I have a *feeling* this is what happened here. Perhaps that's why you're getting the 'shutdown' fault - because SP2 wasn't installed correctly.

Did your lappy come with a boot disk? I've had to resort to the disk a few times, when a repair didn't work. That is, I had to repair Vista running off the boot disk, but it's been so long ago, I can't remember WHY I had to did this. Anyway, the Vista boot disk saved my bacon a couple of times, so you might try that if you HAVE a boot disk, or maybe you can download one from Asus, if it's available online.

Good luck!

 

[imported_SLIM]

I'm now using this as an excuse to replace vista with 64 bit win7 RC. I got the iso by sticking the laptop drive in my main system. At least this way I won't lose my data partition like the recovery disk was planning.

Thanks for the reply Vin, but I really didn't do any resets or anything. My laptop has a bios level password, so the only thing I did during SP2 install was enter the boot password about 4 times until I noticed that windows was complaining about not booting properly and recommending I do a repair.

EDIT:
Now that the laptop drive is in my office system, chkdsk is finding some bad sectors which was probably the source of the problems I was having both before and after the SP2 install.