I have two PCs both dual boot XP/Win 7, (on separate HDs) with more or less the same progs on them. One not much used these days.
The not much used one failed some time ago after doing a Win7 update. After re-booting it re-set at the 'configuring your PC' stage, and re-set each time it got there. Wouldn't boot to the safe condition either and all attempts at repair failed.
So I bought a new HD and cloned it from the working machine Win7 HD. That worked fine.
Until yesterday - the first time it had been used in a couple of weeks. It again decided to do an update and failed in exactly the same way. The XP side still works ok, so I'm wondering what's going on?
For some reason it has no restore points saved - even although there are ones on the HD it was cloned from.
No. But it worked ok before. The 'main' PC which is in use every day started out with a cloned HD from the other machine. I do have my own full price Win7 and XP - it's just that cloning the HD so much quicker than loading in everything from scratch.
It might be worth running memtest86 from a CD. Windows 7 may be harder on the RAM than XP, or may be using an area that XP doesn't normally need due to its smaller footprint.
You have tried running a bootable memory tester from a CD?
I have seen something like it once or twice on Win7, but have always had the fallback of a restore point available before the failed update. I got a bargain fast portable secondhand because it had run into this Win7 update gotcha. I never did figure out the root cause but now always make sure I have the backups and restore points needed to unpick a bad update. If you can get in it is worth looking to see what the datestamps of recent updates were on the machine that is still working.
Most annoying is the "Mickeysoft Tuesday automatic we've force closed everything rebooted your machine which sometimes reinstates itself" :(
Cloned disks even in nominally identical PCs can be a source of trouble are you sure that all hardware and drivers are exactly matched?
I understand why you cloned. I had this problem ages ago with WinXP when I got several totally identical machines for my office. I set the first one up then cloned the disc onto the others. This caused no end of problems, all fixed by re-running the WinXP install on each machine.
Even Dell managed to 'install a boobytrap' when the lazy cnuts simply recycled an image made on an intel cpu'd system for use on an AMD cpu'd one.
It was winXP and was fine until SP3 (or a post SP3 update) fell foul of the 'boobytrap' resulting in either a lockup or complete failure to boot. Luckily, it could still be booted in safe mode allowing the cpu related driver files to be de-referenced in the registry allowing it to boot normally and have said drivers properly removed to eliminate any future issues.
When you simply clone an OS onto another PC for the sake of convenience, this sort of issue is the price you might find yourself paying. Don't expect too much sympathy from the good folk in this NG if you're not prepared to at least attempt a repair install.
It's not a lot of work to attempt a repair though, surely? Switching off the updater is a really bad idea unless you also remove this machine from the www.
CMOS battery flat? That could cause some hardware to reconfigure itself to defaults that then causes new drivers to be needed (eg HDD from PATA emulation to AHCI native-SATA mode).
I was only using the Dell winXP case as an example of how just cloning can create such problems with future updates. Any modern Desktop OS (not just MS windows) is a very complex system with lots of opportunity for unforseen consequences to arise, if any element is misconfigured for whatever reason.
It has to be said that a repair installation won't fix such problems in every case although, ignoringany malware and rootkit issues that may exist, it often does.
When you've exhausted this remedy to no avail, the next step is usually a case of a scratch install (after making sure you've backed up all important user data beforehand) onto a freshly formatted partition. You might well elect to use a utility to completely over-write every sector on the drive with zeros to guarantee a genuinely fresh install (eliminating virus infected MBR boot sectors and rogue hidden partitions).
If you're going to zero out the drive, it's best to use that feature in the drive maker's diagnostic utility since it will also verify whether or not there are any bad sectors which may have caused the problem in the first place. Likewise, run a memory test such as memtest86 to make certain there aren't any subtle memory faults which could also cause similar symptoms. Once you're happy with those basic diagnostic tests, you can have more confidence that a scratch install won't prove to be an utter waste of time as is so often the case when hardware faults are overlooked or ignored.
Or you can take the more pragmatic approach and avoid the problem that way. You may well have a pressing need to avoid the day or two's worth of time out of a busy work schedule of jobs that need the up time on that PC. It's a matter of priorities only you can decide.
Obviously, it would be very nice if you could find a trivial, if rather obscure, fix to the problem at hand but it might take a lot of time researching potential fixes before finding, if ever, the quick fix you require.
Sometimes, the pragmatic solution is to bite the bullet and run a scratch install (You can save an image of the system partition so you can revert back to the status quo, if this solution fails you).
Alternatively, if you have a spare disk drive to hand[1], you can try the fresh install approach on a different disk and avoid the backup / restore cycle of a disk image in the event this fails or you feel the need to resume whatever activities you were running 'at the drop of a hat'. You can always continue with the new install task as and when you can spare the time and feel up to another session.
[1] The disk only needs to be big enough for the OS and a small subset of apps to let you test whether this will prove to be an effective solution to your current problem. A 40 GB disk should suffice for this purpose (obviously, a larger disk will offer better performance if you have one available).
IIRC I read something abut some MS update borking some machines...in The Register. Something to do with drivers that were no longer loadable IIRC - try a search there.
Interesting. I'm going to do it again so will check and make sure it has a restore point recorded afterwards. It's only a few minutes work to whip out the drive and clone it. As opposed to the many hours it would take to install afresh and load in all the progs I use.
IIRC it will bring up the repair console. Or am I being vastly over-optimistic? In any case, this is a cloned drive, so it's not an enormous risk to try it out.
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