BleepingComputer.com: Issues with Reinstall Vista Home Basic

Hi,

I need some help. My friend has given me her laptop to fix, with me working in I.T. majority of the time I can fix things but this one is baffling me no end. Its a Dell Inspiron 1525 Laptop on Vista Home Basic.

To cut a long story short she closed the lid on the laptop whilst it was still running (her kids) when coming to turn it back on it would load up but then go into the repair facility but this went on for hours and hours with no successful outcome. Thats what I come into play, I tried booting into safe mode but would hang on BTHidmgr.sys which I understand is some sort of Bluetooth device, then it would restart. Tried system restore that wouldnt work as it wasnt enabled, have tried to do a clean install but that will not even work, tried installing Xp (formatting the partitions etc) then reinstalling Vista but still no joy. It either comes up with error messages like winboot.dll is missing and other error codes or it just wont boot up without going into the repair facility which doesnt work. I have no idea what to try next I have tried almost everything. I just dont understand why I can install Xp but not vista. Im slowly starting to loose my rag with it to be fair, and I dont want to give it back to them un-fixed. Could this be an issue with the HD or the CD? Can anyone help me please.

Many Thanks in advance

Hi Emma J and welcome to BC

When your friend's kids closed the laptop while it was running, it may have gone into hibernate mode. It saves your session so when you "open" up the laptop it will automatically resume where it left off. However, if there was anything plugged into the laptop (like flash drives, wireless bridges, etc.) and it was removed, then when you open up the laptop to resume, Windows thinks that the device is still plugged in when it's not. This can cause systems hangs and unrecoverable errors as it tries to "find" it.

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Let me understand...did you try and clean install XP which was successful and then did an upgrade to Vista? Do you have an upgrade or full Vista DVD? Or did you try and upgrade using recovery media from Dell?

Please clarify..