Text 68013, 68 rader
Skriven 2012-02-20 12:26:38 av mark lewis (1:3634/12.0)
     Kommentar till en text av Alan Zisman (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: Gateway puzzler
=======================
yes, it is an old message but i'm just getting to it... i'm going to leave the
post in place due to its age and most likely having been purged from other
systems so threading back won't work... my comments and questions are inline ;)

 AZ> Here's another not-quite-working computer that's puzzling me. 

 AZ> My son has a Gateway laptop - a couple of years old - that came
 AZ> with Vista pre-installed, and (despite the mass anti-Vista
 AZ> hysteria) has generally been running reasonably happily.

 AZ> Not long ago, it stopped booting up - it would display the
 AZ> BIOS/setup screen, the initial Vista logo screen, then display the
 AZ> Windows boot menu (noting that the previous boot had failed), and
 AZ> then - no matter which choice on the boot menu was chosen, within a
 AZ> couple of seconds the system would re-start. (Infinite Loop!)

i saw this once with a corrupted hive... it was due to the owner not thinking
about the cooling slots on the bottom and sides and using the machine on the
bed until it overheated and shutdown forcibly...

 AZ> So I tried booting to a Vista install disc, figuring something in
 AZ> the installation was corrupt - it wouldn't boot to the install disc
 AZ> either. 

ok... lemme get this right... no boot to vista from HD or CD?

 AZ> It would, however, boot to an Ubuntu disc, and run Ubuntu happily
 AZ> from that. 

but it does boot from ubuntu? have you tried any other winwhatever boot CDs?

 AZ> My son took it to a local computer shop - the technician there
 AZ> claimed the hard drive had failed. (Though that didn't explain why
 AZ> we couldn't boot to the Vista DVD)... since I have a spare HD, we
 AZ> took it back (no charge). 

they were definitely off their rocker if the vista CD wouldn't boot either...

 AZ> I plugged in a hard drive that had last been used in a system set
 AZ> up to multi-boot between Vista and Ubuntu. Trying to boot to Vista
 AZ> from the replacement hard drive had the same results as with the
 AZ> original drive - and it booted to the Ubuntu partition without
 AZ> problem.

i'm starting to suspect something in the BIOS... possibly a virus in the flash
storage area...

 AZ> I wondered whether there was an issue with one or more of the RAM
 AZ> modules, so I pulled them both, plugged in a different (1 GB)
 AZ> module and tried booting to Vista - with the same non-results.

same problem, new memory... hummm... flash that BIOS and see if it helps... it
may not IIRC if there is an area that is not cleared and wiped during the
flashing process...

 AZ> I'm stumped - I haven't tried booting to other Windows discs (I
 AZ> suppose I could try Win 7 and/or XP), but why should the system be
 AZ> able to boot to Ubuntu - both installed on hard drive and on a Live
 AZ> CD, but fail to boot to Windows - both from two different hard
 AZ> drive installations and from the install DVD??? 

as i note above, i would suspect one of those flash area boot virus critters...
especially if no winwhatever can boot but if it is such a critter, it may be
specific to vista and so other winthings may boot...

)\/(ark

 * Origin:  (1:3634/12)