Wife needs help with her F8SV-A1

Hi! I need your assistance in helping my wife with her Asus F8SV-A1. I am currently deployed and is unable to assist her myself. It's hard to do help when you don't have access to the computer or even one of the same make and model.

Her Asus F8SV-A1 (2GB, Vista Premium) stopped working the other day after an automatic update of Vista. The following is the messages I got from her during the last 24 hours:

Wife: The laptop won't start up windows....I have done what I could...tried safe mode, system recovery, start up in last good configuaration, nothing is happening. The only real message I ever get says something about removing any new hardware such as a web cam and start over...but of course I haven't installed anything new. This all happened after an automatic update from windows.

Wife: I have tried to get into safe mode....it loops me back to system restore which comes up as a failure. I have tried to restore back to the last safe configuration, and again it loops me back to the system restore which again comes up as a failure. I have tried all functions under F8 and all Advanced repairing stuff. I am currently downloading a vista recovery disk from the internet.

Wife: ok, the recovery cd didn't do anything.....I have tried everything.....as I said this all came about after an automatic update....everything just keeps going back to repair function.

I would appreciate any help with issue, especially if you could provide a simple step-by-step procedure for her to follow. Thank you.

 

If I recall correctly, I removed the DVD-Rom from the boot order. I would appreciate it if you could provide me with step-by-step procedure to put the DVD-Rom as the #1 booting device. That way I can have my wife boot into the recover disk (once she finds the right one).

 

This is in the BIOS. Press & hold F2 or F8 (I always forget which) on boot to get into that, then scroll through the options until she sees that screen. Rearrange the boot order, Save/Exit the BIOS, and that should be it.

One other thought on the System Restore thing - did she just try it on the most recent SR point, or did it fail on every one (i.e. go back 2-3 SR points and try it again?)..... nothing to lose on that if it works and saves her the trouble of doing a complete OS reinstall with her applications being gone.

Stay safe wherever you are, Swiper.