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General discussion

Windows Vista 64 bit Not Booting Past "Installing Update"

Jan 7, 2011 3:45PM PST

I have no idea how this happened, but my brother's laptop (Asus K50IJ) boots up and before the login screen it says "Installing Update 3 of 3: 0%". It shows that for about 30 seconds, then restarts. Occasionally it goes to the login screen, then still restarts and does the same.

I've tried booting it in safe mode to no avail, and even popped in the Recovery DVD and still the same. I have no idea where to go next.

Discussion is locked

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Repairs are limited with RESTORE MEDIA.
Jan 9, 2011 5:23AM PST

I don't know if Asus gives you a bootable Vista DVD that let's you get to the RECOVERY CONSOLE. All apologies in advance as I don't duplicate the web about the RECOVERY CONSOLE but I did recover one (and more) such errors by booting the full Retail Vista DVD, heading to the RECOVERY CONSOLE and CHKDSK'ing drive C and the other drives.

Tell more about those restore DVDs.
Bob

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Thanks Bob
Jan 9, 2011 7:56AM PST

Thanks man, I ended up hitting F9 and recovering it with what was preloaded on the hard drive. I spent so much time trying to figure out how to make the laptop boot from the recovery cd's, only to find out that my brother (who the laptop belongs to) lost the driver cd's. Oh well, you live and learn, right?

Thanks for all your help though Bob, much appreciated.

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Time to make more plans.
Jan 9, 2011 8:03AM PST

Since the restore media is lost and most makers only let you create it ONE TIME (but you can duplicate it later) I think we need to make a plan so in the future, if you need to, you can restore the machine to today's image.

Here's what I use -> CLONEZILLA

See google and make this bootable CD. You can test that it boots and if so, the NEXT STEP is to find some USB drive that has enough space to hold what's on that laptop's HDD.

FOR EXAMPLE, my dell with it's 640GB HDD took under 100GB to back up on my external USB HDD which gives me another way to restore the machine back to that day.

Clonezilla is free and not very hard to use.
Bob

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Planning
Jan 9, 2011 8:14AM PST

Thanks Bob, I'm definitely downloading that for my own laptop. I'd hate for my laptop to break down like his did. Especially during exam time, that's an imminent fear for me.

Thanks again, I really appreciate the help!