Vista will only boot in Safe Mode....

[Appleby]

I had a new business customer call last week and said his laptop that he runs his restaurant off of wasn't booting and he needed my services. I went on site and the laptop would boot up normally all the way to the Vista horizontally scrolling bar screen. After a few minutes the loading bar would disappear and it would just be a black screen with no mouse. He said the machine did this on Wednesday morning when he came into work. After multiple attempts he got the machine to boot into Windows normally and all was well. Thursday it did it again but after multiple attempts again, he got it to boot ok. Then Thursday afternoon it did it again so he called me out.

After witnessing the problem, I successfully booted into Safe Mode perfectly. I looked at his restore points to see what had been installed recently and there were some Windows and driver updates done on Wednesday morning AFTER the problem had begun and he'd gotten the machine booted. There were no other recent changes to the machine. So I backed up all his data and rolled it back to a date previous to Wednesday. It booted perfectly. Since they insisted the problem started on Wednesday morning at 8 am, I knew the updates that were done Wed. at 9:45 am could not be the source of the problem. However, I went ahead and did those updates again and restarted the machine. It worked perfectly. I rebooted a few more times just to check it and he was interested in setting up Carbonite online backup, so I set that up and left it running. I told him to call me if he had any problems.

He called today (Saturday) and says it's doing it again. I haven't gone back out yet but I want to research this before I go onsite again. Any thoughts on what might be causing this and why he can sometimes get the machine to boot after multiple start up attempts but Safe Mode works fine every time? I'm almost wondering about a hard drive problem but doing a System Restore shouldn't help, nor should booting into Safe Mode.

Any thoughts on what to look at first? My problem is that he runs his whole restaurant from this machine (all the book keeping, ledgers, hourly sales etc) and it's hard for him to be without too long, so taking it back to the office for a long diagnostic is possible and ok with him but it puts a strain on their normal work day. Thoughts?

 

[Morrison5891]

Have you tried a system repair with a Vista installation disc?

Also you can try a selective startup and see where the problem is.

1. Open System Configuration by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Maintenance, clicking Administrative Tools, and then double-clicking System Configuration.*

2. Click the General tab, click Selective startup, and then clear the Load system services and the Load startup items check boxes.

3. Select the Load system services check box, click OK, and then click Restart.

 

[Alan22]

Maybe scan the hard drive for bad sectors. I had a similar issue last week. Dell Inspiron 1501 w/ Vista. I had a feeling it was caused by alot of fragmentation (30% fragmentation) and just 3GB free space on the OS partition. It certainly needed a larger hard drive, so I cloned the 80GB to a 250GB, which failed as certain sectors couldn't be read on the 80. I cloned again, ignoring bad sectors, then performed a repair install off the Vista CD. I installed all Windows updates and it's been working great.

 

[Appleby]

Thanks guys. I have only tried what I posted so far.... and it worked that day....doing a System Restore Safe Mode.

I will try both things mentioned. I will try the selective start up, assuming I can still boot into Safe Mode when I get there tomorrow.

I'll also use SpinRite to test for bad sectors, which I'm beginning to wonder if might be the problem.

I hate to post questions like this when I haven't done alot of research/troubleshooting, but like I said, due to the weird nature of the problem and the need to fix the pc asap and preferably on-site, I wanted to get some input for ideas first.

I really appreciate the help. I'll post an update after I go out on-site tomorrow.

 

[GotaPC]

Like they suggested earlier , go ahead and repair that copy of vista with the original DVD , or you can always restore to an old restore point ,as you already know that wont affect the customers Data so go ahead and restore to whatever date you want!

Or what i would suggest is go ahead and tell them about windows 7 and how good it is , sell them a brand new copy and charge them for back , installation and set-up for drivers and security! that way you can make more money and you dont have to worry about any call backs from that customers about his computer messing up!

Good luck.

 

[bagellad]

Use Hdtune and scan the drive, if its on the way out the sooner the better that they know.

 

[Appleby]

Tuesday Update

Ok I went onsite Monday and once I got there I found that my SpinRite disk was missing that I use to test for bad sectors on HD's. I had left my laptop at my office so I couldn't burn the ISO again while there. I know....it was Monday.lol

When I get there, the compute is hung booting up on a black screen, no cursor. I reboot, same thing. I reboot in Safe Mode, no go. It locks up while loading. I reboot and choose "Last Know Good Config" and it boots perfectly. Oh by the way, I backed everything up on the drive at the end of last week and they have Carbonite, so I wasn't too concerned if it was an HD problem that I was making it worse. Anyway, I looked in the System Restore logs and didn't see much that looked like it would have caused the problem. I confirmed that Carbonite had been backing up and I went ahead and rebooted to see what it would do.

When it rebooted this time, it seemed to take a long time to load the desktop but when it did, it was a generic temp user profile and I got the error that "Your user profile was not loaded correctly". I Googled that it from what I can see, most people that get that message have a corrupted profile and they never get logged back into it correctly. The fix is to delete the profile in the registry and create a new one. I reboot and it boots into the normal profile just fine again. I use MSCONFIG to turn on the Diagnostic Startup option, reboot and it won't boot. Try again, boot ok and I turn off the Diag. Startup, reboot again ok.

So at this point I know I've got something really strange happening and I leave and plan on coming back with my SpinRite disk. I leave the laptop on and tell the customer to not reboot it and all should be fine.

TUESDAY

I go back onsite today and sure enough the laptop is running perfectly since yesterday. I boot off my SpinRite disk and get it scanning which will take 2 hrs, so I leave and come back after lunch. SpinRite found NO bad sectors, HD checks out fine. I reboot into the darn temp. user account again. Reboot and it goes into the normal acct. just fine. Reboot, works fine. Now I'm at a freaking loss.

Obviously I want to do a repair, but I feel like that is a total shot in the dark. The customer does not have any of his original disks and I can't find my copy of Vista Home Premium. His is a Sony OEM version and if I can find mine it will be a Dell OEM disk....not sure if that matters.

He's running and OLD version of Lotus 123 on there and he says he has the disk for that, but I'm a little nervous about screwing it up on a repair install and I have 0 experience with Lotus.

If a repair doesn't work, I guess a full nuke and pave is the next option. I'm thinking since the HD is ruled out, this HAS to be a software issue. But I'm beginning to look like an idiot and he knows I have no idea what the problem is. I've made about 5 onsite trips which I can't charge for all of them or he could have already bought a new laptop. I've got to get this thing fixed asap or tell him to go buy a new one. I can't keep dumping time into it when I don't feel I can bill for it.

Repair install, Nuke and Pave....any other random thoughts? What about trying to just create a new user acct., migrate his data over and see how that goes....maybe there is some random glitch which his user acct.?

 

[NYJimbo]

He's running and OLD version of Lotus 123 on there and he says he has the disk for that, but I'm a little nervous about screwing it up on a repair install and I have 0 experience with Lotus.

Old version?. Has a new one been released in the last 8-10 years?. Wow, I wouldnt want to touch that with a 10 foot pole.

 

[Appleby]

Old version?. Has a new one been released in the last 8-10 years?. Wow, I wouldnt want to touch that with a 10 foot pole.

LOL! I have no idea when Lotus was last produced, I know nothing about it and this is the first machine I've ever seen it on since I've been in business. It's version 9.5 and the copyright says 1999.lol I'm not sure how he got it running on Vista but it is. He said he's willing to switch to something else, but to be honest, I don't even know what the heck Lotus 123 is? He says it's some sort of spread sheet. I think Lotus was before my time....I'm 31.

Any thoughts on a fix?

 

[NYJimbo]

LOL! I have no idea when Lotus was last produced, I know nothing about it and this is the first machine I've ever seen it on since I've been in business. It's version 9.5 and the copyright says 1999.lol I'm not sure how he got it running on Vista but it is. He said he's willing to switch to something else, but to be honest, I don't even know what the heck Lotus 123 is? He says it's some sort of spread sheet. I think Lotus was before my time....I'm 31.

Any thoughts on a fix?

If the guy has money you might want to do a whole "hand holding" intro to the 21st century. New machine, new apps, but not too painful in the wallet. Warn him that he is painting himself into a corner with what he has and one day his machine will not be fixable and none of his data will be extractable to be put into a new app/environment and he will be F-CKED !

If this is a nice project and the guy is not a cheap *******, really work through the whole thing. Don't do anything for free, but dont overprice it. Guys in the food biz are connected and will often recommend you to others.

Bottom line, he is doomed with his old setup. As long as you see money in getting him up to date and you dont hate the process of doing it, I would go for it.

ps- Lotus 123 was around since the 80's, its dead.

 

[ATTech]

I don't even know what the heck Lotus 123 is? He says it's some sort of spread sheet. I think Lotus was before my time....I'm 31.

It was big in the mid 80's. That explains why you don't know about it, you were just starting grade school.

 

[Appleby]

HA! Thanks for the Lotus info guys, I wondered why I knew nothing at all about it and had never even really seen it "in action".

NYJimbo, if I charged this guy for all my time he would already be better off buying a new machine probably. But one thing to note, this is NOT an old machine. It is a less than 2 year old Sony Vaio with Vista Home Premium pre-installed, a couple gigs of RAM and a Intel Dual Core processor. It's really nice laptop with no previous issues. Now the Lotus thing....ya it's way antiquated.

I think I'm going to have to try the repair of the OS and see what happens.

As for moving him from Lotus, he isn't against that, but he nor I have any idea what to move him to? He says he uses it for internal use only, he has an accountant that does his books for him. Lotus allows him to see his daily (and I think maybe he said hourly?) receipts etc. He says the enter data every day into. He says he's willing to explore other options, but what those options are I don't know. Whoever set Lotus up for him, seems to have everything set up where it is really easy for him to enter all this data into it.

Oh and you made an excellent point about this guy being connected. He is a local guy with the busiest steak and burger lunch crowd in town. He also does a TON of catering for oil companies and big businesses. Getting in good with this guy is very important and that is why I've got to get this fixed and quit floundering around. I explained to him that it's alot harder to fix a computer that works fine 70% of the time VS a machine with a constant problem. He understands that and even admits, "how can you fix it when it's working perfectly?" My point exactly.

 

[loaner]

as far as replacing lotus 123...any programable spreadsheet app will do.

he can use works spreadsheet....add columns and rows however he wants.
just pick a day to change over and keep on going.

...goss

 

[Appleby]

Ok here is an update....

The business owner showed me his Lotus spreadsheet and what all it did. I was in utter shock! It was several pages wide with 10-12 tabs of data and it has all his sales, expenses and every single category you can think of broken down by hour....for every single hour of every single since the business first opened. It's phenomenal how big and extensive this spreadsheet is with a TON of formulas in the thing. I'm serious, it was the biggest, most complex spread sheet I've ever seen and all the columns were nicely laid out and every one color coded. Whoever built this spreadsheet obviously knew what they were doing.

After much frustration in trying to get his data out of Lotus, using conversions and everything else, I decided to do the obvious....see what my Save As options were. And there it was, Save As Excel File. DUH! Only problem was it for a very very old version of Excel that I'd never even seen. I saved the file as the Excel format, fired up Excel and BAM it opened up perfectly. Every page, every column, every tab, every color coded column. I couldn't believe my eyes. I let the customer sit down and mess with the Excel spreadsheet to determine if all the data was there and the formulas all calculated correctly and they did.

By the this time, he was thinking I was a genius and I was thanking the Lord for answered prayers!

I ended up leaving the machine as-is and he's going to try to keep it running and test Excel over the next few days and he'll keep putting the data in Lotus too, just to be safe. Carbonite is making backups of the data, so we should be safe if it crashes. Then I'm going to do a reinstall of Vista. Unfortunately he's got SP2 on there and my Vista disc is SP1 so I'm pretty sure a Repair Install won't work.

Anyway, I'm relieved for now because his data has been my greatest concern since day 1. Thanks for the help. I'll keep you updated on the real fix later.