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    Trouble reinstalling Windows via recovery CD on f8sv-a1

    Discussion in 'Asus' started by Picklesworth, Dec 2, 2007.

  1. Picklesworth

    Picklesworth Notebook Enthusiast

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    This is with the Asus F8SV-A1 notebook.
    I foolishly resized Vista's NTFS partition when I installed Ubuntu, not realizing that it was unusually sensitive to being resized. Turns out I should have resized this partition through Vista itself. (I won't rant, but I would...).

    Today's partition scheme:
    45 GB NTFS Primary
    25 GB Ext3 Primary
    90 GB Ext3 Primary

    Nothing is currently in the two Ext3 partitions, or the NTFS partition; they were cleanly formatted by the GParted LiveCD.

    I pop in the recovery CD, tell it to restore Windows to the first partition. It accepts the challenge and starts moving!
    Drivers seem to be installed happily from the driver CD. I remove that when the computer is restarted. I see the Vista startup screen with the green bar. Now the insanity happens:

    The first time I boot, some text appears on the screen telling me that Windows is readying itself for its first boot. I wait... and I wait. Finally it finishes readying itself and the screen goes black. Mouse cursor is visible and movable, however. Hard drive light is on. About two minutes later, the computer is rebooted. Again, the Windows startup screen, followed by the fancier Vista logo, followed by blackness as before and a long wait.
    In total, the system reboots 4 times. The fourth time, I see a console in the background (installing drivers...) and a dialog appears telling me to restart the computer (this time letting me press the button to do it. Exciting.)

    The fifth time is the last :(
    Boots as before, I see the Vista welcome screen (right before the login screen) along with the startup sound, it sits for a while... then a dialog appears telling me that "Windows could not complete the installation" and suggests that I restart the installation. Hitting OK restarts the computer. Same thing from then on. It does not seem to give me any further detail as to why the entire bloody operating system could not be installed and why it took 30 minutes to determine that.

    Some help would be very appreciated! Has anyone had similar experiences?


    Update:
    I got Windows booting with carbonel_2007's instructions in this thread. Now I just have to mother it back to health...
     
    Picklesworth, Dec 2, 2007
    #1