> Looks and sounds like HD failure
>
> --
> Peter
>
> Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
> Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
>
> "Patricio" <Patricio[ at ]newsgroups.nospam> wrote in message news:e572e5df140618cb1d044b124c75[ at ]msnews.microsoft.com...
> > Hello,
> >
> > I upgraded my Vista system drive using Seagate's DiscWizard tool to clone
> > my old system drive. Everything when ok. Vista was able to boot and re-boot
> > with no issues. After seeing that everything was fine I used the old system
> > drive to replace a failing drive on another system (which was the reason
> > I bought a new drive in the first place).
> >
> > Because it was a new drive (Seagate 1.5 TB) I decided to run a chkdsk (/f
> > /r) to make sure everything was ok. The chkdsk took forever so that I left
> > it running overnight. When I saw the system the next day it was stuck in
> > a black screen with the mouse functional. I rebooted the machine with the
> > reset button (ctrl-alt-del will not do it) and the system failed to reboot
> > (no boot manager error). With my Vista DVD I did the startup repair and
> > then it staterd to re-boot normally. After the bios screens I got the small
> > green progress bar as usual and the the screen turned black and changed resolution
> > (as usual). After a while the mouse pointer will appear and then all HDD
> > activity would stop (just a flash every 10 or 20 seconds with no clear pattern).
> > I lefted several hours and the black screen with the fuctional mouse pointer
> > stayed the same. Ctrl-alt-del or alt-tab would not do anything.
> >
> > I tried to re-boot it several times and I got the same results. Booting
> > in safe mode will do the same but staying in low resolution. The startup
> > repair said that everything was ok. I ran chkdsk /f /r and it reported 13
> > bad sector on free clusters. Yes, I will have to exchange the drive. But
> > before that I would like to reboot my Vista install and make it functional
> > so that I can put it on a new drive. A clean install is my last option because
> > I don't have the time to setup my system from scratch (yes, I know I should
> > have backed-up the whole system if it was so important. But to my defense
> > I am waiting for the new versions of WHS system so that I can backup my systems.)
> > My user data is safe and backed-up.
> >
> > I tried all the startup modes with no diferent results: safe modes, low resolution,
> > debug, disabling signature checking, last know configuration, etc. The boot
> > log showed that the last driver to load was the nvoclock.sys (NVidia utility)
> > so that I think it could be video-driver related. I renamed the driver and
> > rebooted with the same results. System restore reports no restore points.
> > I know I had restore points before.
> >
> > Serching the net gives many other people with the same issue. Some of them
> > said it is a video driver issue, others said that it is a virtual drive driver,
> > etc. (
http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/747332.htm, http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2805226&SiteID=17).> >
> > I wanted to do an install-upgrade of Vista but I can't do that booting from
> > the DVD (I have the Vista DVD with SP1) because the option is grayed out
> > with a message saying that I need to run the Setup from witihn Vista to do
> > the upgrade.
> >
> > I also tried the System File Checker (SFC) but it does not run from the Recovery
> > Command Prompt. Error is "Windows Resource Protection could not start the
> > repair service".
> >
> > Concrete questions:
> >
> > 1. Is there a way to run the SFC from the Recovery Command Prompt? Could
> > this fix my issue. Or,
> >
> > 2. can I do/force/hack a install-upgrade booting from the Vista DVD. Or,
> >
> > 3. can I uninstall/disable the NVidia video driver from the Recovery Command
> > Prompt so that the system uses the default video driver? Or,
> >
> > 4. I read a comment about doing a parallel Vista installation. Could that
> > help me to recover the current install? Or,
> >
> > 5. any ideas you can think of?
> >
> > Thank you in advance for your help.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Patricio.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>