I had acquired a Vista AIO DVD and installed Vista Ultimate 32-bit about 3 months ago. It was working perfectly. Last week, Vista decided it was no longer a Genuine copy and gave me the limited access screen. I was using it to get online and try to find a method to get out of this. I *do* have a legal copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, but it's an Upgrade disc and when I tried to use the CD key to get back into that copy of Windows, it said the CD key wouldn't work cause it was an upgrade key. So, I decided I would go the route of Windows XP Pro. I stuck the disc in the drive, let the machine reboot and I saw the "Checking Hardware Configuration" line for a second. Then the screen went black and it just sat there. I rebooted. Same thing. I tried booting from the Vista AIO disc and it greeted me with an endless reboot cycle. I have tried three different Windows XP Pro discs and they all do the same thing. I have tried an SATA DVD drive and an IDE DVD drive and it all still does the same thing. To add insult to injury, I couldn't even get Windows Vista to load anymore. With just booting to Windows Vista, I would get into an endless reboot cycle. So, I have installed Ubuntu Linux (it was the only Linux disc which *would* boot and install.) I hope someone here might be able to give me some help. PC Specs: Abit motherboard with Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz CPU. 2 GB type-matched DDR2 RAM. The hard drive I was using is a 160 GB IDE drive partitioned into a 40 GB and 120 GB drive. The primary DVD drive I use is the SATA drive. Need any more info for this? Any help is greatly appreciated. Undrhil
Well, the problem is that I can't boot from the CDs. I am in the process of copying the install files over to the harddrive in order to try installing them manually somehow, but without a floppy drive, I'm not sure how I'm going to get to a DOS prompt from within Linux. EDIT: I made a "boot cd" which just uses the boot image file from win98. I'll have to remake the disc to include the memory management files emm386.exe and himem.sys. I managed to get Windows 98 installed but it wouldn't boot into it either. I have a sneaky feeling that something had been written into my BIOS which is preventing me from installing Windows. Is it possible that running Windows Vista in "non-genuine" mode could have triggered something to modify my BIOS to not allow further Windows installs? I know it sounds far-fetched, but I wouldn't put it past Microsoft. Anyway, I'm back to square one, so any ideas are appreciated. Undrhil
I got it working! Well, kind of. I finally got the machine to a stable DOS prompt and flashed the BIOS to the latest version. That, at least, allowed me to get the Windows XP CD to boot finally. I tried doing the Windows Vista install, but Vista still doesn't like something on my machine. I'm not really sure what at this point. One of the error messages I kept getting was a PFN_LIST_CORRUPT blue screen. A little research told me to check my memory. I took one stick of my 2GB out and the Vista install at least was getting to ~80% Extracting files but it was still locking up. I decided to install Windows XP and just live with it until I can afford to buy a new PC, which will come with Windows Vista and (generally) shouldn't give me any hassles with upgrading that version to Ultimate. So, if you have a problem similar to what I was having, try getting online and checking to see if there is a newer version of your BIOS which you can flash. If there isn't a newer version, you might be able to get away with using the same version which you have on the BIOS now, but I don't know how well that would work, so try at your own risk. Also, try removing RAM sticks. :-D
Well, apparently, my computer is not as well as I thought it was. I still get the occasional blue screen but it seems to always be the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error. And it seems to be related to my sound, which is built into my motherboard. I'm going to move my SB sound card over to my machine and disable the onboard audio and see if I get any more problems there. On the whole, it's starting to look like something is slowly killing my motherboard. :: Sigh :: I might have to buy a new one ... maybe.