Military AI Works

Oh boy...
Vista 64 Home Edition
16 Gigs RAM
dual nvidia 8800 (I think)
quad 2.8 CPU
lots of hard drives

So, I see that Windows wants to do a big update this morning. I let it download and then tell the machine to install the updates. The machine goes to restart itself and install the updates. It gets through the first update and starts on the second when all hell breaks loose.

It goes into this loop where the update fails and it keeps rebooting. I try and boot it into safe mode and it begins to load the drivers and dies....reboots. So, I decide to reinstall Windows and do a repair. The repair finishes and loads the drivers...does the same thing as above.

So, wtf...I'll just do a complete reinstall....I do this and it never finishes...just does the same thing as above. Now, I can't even boot to the DVD drive. It just keeps doing the same thing.

Now, I don't know what's wrong. Is it a bad drive? I am all about shopping for more hard drives.

Thanks.

Oh man, that blows, that thing isn't even a year old yet is it??

That's the exact thing my wife pointed out to me.

Does it always reboot at the same point, or is it after a certain amount of time? I'm just wondering if something is perhaps overheating and causing the restarts.

It is doing it at the same point each time. I am trying to install Windows on another drive...perhaps the other drive was bad? That would suck....that's a 1TB drive. I know they're cheap now but it wasn't cheap when I got it.

Hmm, that is weird, smells like a driver issue, but as all was fine before that doesn't make a huge amount of sense.

I presume you've tried the usual trick of unplugging and re-seating everything in case something has worked loose?

Yup I sure did. That's a pain in the ass. Well, I am wondering if the hard drive died during the process because I am able to install Windows to another drive. It looks like everything is loading fine.

Damn...that's never happened to me before. A drive dying during an update?

Whilst not ruling out a drive issue, Dan, it doesn't sound like one. What it does sound like is there is some mod or configuration that you have is at odds with the upgrade.

I have a similar issue on one laptop, using XP, IE7 is corrupted and always opens two windows nothing I can do about it other than wipe and start again.

Is this feasible or will you lose too much?

Do you know which upgrade is causing the issue?

Firebird wrote:Whilst not ruling out a drive issue, Dan, it doesn't sound like one. What it does sound like is there is some mod or configuration that you have is at odds with the upgrade.

I have a similar issue on one laptop, using XP, IE7 is corrupted and always opens two windows nothing I can do about it other than wipe and start again.

Is this feasible or will you lose too much?

Do you know which upgrade is causing the issue?

Yes, I'd tend to agree, it does sound indicative of either a hardware conflict (unlikely if you haven't changed anything) or a driver / update clashing with something.

The only thing I was doing was updating whatever update Windows wanted me to download. You know, just a business as usual routine...now I think that hard drive is fried. My wife is letting me buy a new drive, though....a 1.5T!

Why am I excited about that? Hell, I don't know...I come nowhere near filling up that space.

Vista Service Pack 2 just came out recently. Possible initial culprit? If you have tried to re-install the OS to no avail, than I dunno however. FWIW,
-Adam