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Question

windows 8 problem after update

Sep 14, 2013 2:11AM PDT

i have a Hp Pavillion notebook Pc with stock windows 8. today after installing updates it started rebooting repeatedly. adter a few times i saw Getting ready and Installing devices(it had refreshed my pc or something i guess) anyways i logged on and the screen was flickering with my start window and desktop. i tried restarting but got no results. i tried restoring, refreshing and reseting but nothing worked so i put in my HP DVDs and started system restore. Now, while installing, my pc gives an error at 90% progress about some *.swp file which could not b copied which it skips and continues with the installation. on rebooting, it gets to the login screen but gives a message that windows is not installed correctly! Please advice! Thanks a lot!

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Time to contact the manufacturer
Sep 14, 2013 2:19AM PDT

When I've run into this kind of thing, I format the hard drive, check it for bad sectors, then restore from a backup. I take it you don't have a backup Sad so I hope you've learned your lesson from this. Contact your computer's manufacturer, and get them to send you the discs you'll need to restore to factory settings.
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<span id="INSERTION_MARKER"> When you've gotten your system back like you want it, I urge you to get yourself an external hard drive and a good 3rd party backup program. You can set it up to do everything automagically at the time and frequency of your choice. 1 TB external hard drives are about $70 these days and a really good FREE backup program is the Easeus Todo Backup Free which you can download fromhttp://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm . That can save you a lot of time and frustration the next time something like this happens. Sooner or later it happens to all computers for one reason or another.
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Good luck.
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have the discs!!
Sep 14, 2013 5:02AM PDT

Actually i do have the discs. And about the backup, i have everything important backed-up! So if you could tell me how to proceed like formatimg my hdd without an OS an further in installing win 8 through my HP recovery CD's!

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Just put disc 1
Sep 14, 2013 5:10AM PDT

into the optical drive and restart the computer. Hopefully you set the bios to boot from the CD/DVD Drive . If not when you reboot keep tapping f12 and choose boot from CD/DVD and enter, follow instructions from there

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tried that
Sep 14, 2013 5:21AM PDT

I tried doing that. I have 3 discs, with the 3rd disc, it gives an error in copying one file and prompts to skip it!
it finishes the installation, reboots and gives me the error for reinstalling on the login page!

one ques. If i copy that file manually using ubuntu live usb, as in boot ubuntu, insert DVD, copy that file manually to reqd folder!do you think it will work.?

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(NT) wpg better answer that one
Sep 14, 2013 5:24AM PDT
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Did you format C: when you tried the discs?
Sep 14, 2013 5:39AM PDT

Usually the restore to factory settings will format the C: drive, but you should check because if you have a bad sector somewhere, you need to check for that and assign an alternate. If that's not the problem, then you likely have a defective disc 3. That's why I suggested contacting HP to get another. The situation you're in is also why I recommend regular full system backups because if you had that, you could be back up and running in 30 min. or less with drivers, Windows, applications, data and everything without worring about those discs which can easily get scratched.
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Good luck.

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(NT) Just do what Digger says - it'll let you format the drive.
Sep 14, 2013 5:20AM PDT
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help me man!
Sep 14, 2013 5:34AM PDT

Wpg tell me if that is possible man! If you want i can post a snap of the error im getting!

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I think you should be able to do that
Sep 14, 2013 5:40AM PDT

what do you have to lose? Try It

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There's no .SWP file in Windows 7 or 8
Sep 14, 2013 6:18AM PDT

I just searched my Windows 7 and 8 systems, and there's no .SWP file on either. This further substantiates my suspicion that your disc 3 is defective. Sorry.

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error message
Sep 14, 2013 8:07AM PDT

The error shows data copying error from my d drive. The recovery partition that came along with my PC. Not the discs!
ne idea what happens if i remove the existing recovery partition in someway like ubuntu live and thrn try with the discs.?

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Whoa!
Sep 14, 2013 8:27AM PDT

Do you have a repair option on your recovery partition?

Dafydd.

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isn't the d drive
Sep 14, 2013 8:33AM PDT

the optical drive ?

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(NT) On my...
Sep 14, 2013 8:38AM PDT
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(NT) There're no fixed drive letters for anything but C:
Sep 14, 2013 11:36AM PDT
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You know, you really need to post the exact err msg.
Sep 14, 2013 11:34AM PDT

We're really floundering around because we don't have the exact error message, so please post that message. Only as a very last resort would I delete that recovery partition.

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the d drive is
Sep 14, 2013 12:17PM PDT
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How'd you come up with .SWP?
Sep 14, 2013 1:03PM PDT

...Those files aren't .SWP, they're .$WM, so I'm at a loss as to how you could've come up with .SWP. Also I clicked on the 2nd link, but after it download 2 GB and was still downloading, I canceled it. ***?? Copying them with Ubuntu would do you no good either.
As I said initially, you really need to contact HP because your posts are making less and less sense. I hope you're seeing why you need to make full system backups to an external hard drive. If you had, you'd have been up and running a long time ago. Live and learn.

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weekend
Sep 14, 2013 2:05PM PDT

Its weekend and i can't get to HP that is the reason i needed help from you guys! As for the file extension it was a genuine mistake! And i checked the link just as i was posting here and it works very fine!

I dont get it that if i have my recovery partition, my HP discs and i don't care about my data( i keep evrything safe backed up) then why do i need a full system backup!!

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Instruction
Sep 15, 2013 12:08AM PDT

Are the recovery CDs from the factory or were they created by the user on recordable CDs? If latter, you cannot be certain they were done properly and checked that they could successfully restore the factory image.

A factory CD set should restore your hard drive to exactly the image it had when shipped from the factory, including all partitions such as System Reserved and System Recovery.
It sounds to me like you don't have the factory CDs.

Furthermore, make sure your BIOS is set to default before you do any factory re-imaging because the image assumes that the configuration is the same as when the snapshot was taken, so if it's not there Windows may fail to boot. That is another reason why user created images are risky, no matter how you do the image backup. If the user had changed BIOS config, then forgot it, you don't know what will happen when trying to boot from a re-imaged drive.

At this point you should contact HP for support instructions.

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I'll make this as simple as I know how
Sep 15, 2013 1:16AM PDT

Here's the simplest way I know how to put this. If you have a full system backup to an external hard drive, you won't have the problems you're having now.
If you continue to deny this, you're going to continue to have the kind of problems you're struggling with right now. Whether or not you believe and/or understand that, I can't say; but I'm speaking from decades of experience. If you don't believe this, you'll simply have to learn from the painful school of hard knocks. Your choice.