HELP! I'm gonna get fired! 1420 still won't boot...

So, I told a friend i would I would fix her Inspiron 1420 after it wouldn't boot up. I ran diagnostics and even a disc from a local computer store (not gonna put a name up, but I'm not supposed to have the disc!) which contains many diagnostics and other things. Before I started, they both gave me a HD failure. I showed them the messages and had her buy a new HD, a WD 160GB to be exact. She had no reinstallation disc, so i used the one that came with my 1520, a home premium version, in which came hers came with Ultimate. She didn't care, though.

Anyways...i got everything going. Partitioned, installed Vista, installed MediaDirect, and got the windows update downloading updates. It installed 75 updates. I went to restart after completing everything, and it gave me some problems; the same problems as before. The bios loads fine, then when the first loading bar for Microsoft comes up, it gets about 3/4 of the way over the progress bar, and then hangs. It restarts, and then shows the hardware/software problem, tells me to do a system restore, and gives me the choice to boot normal, safe mode, etc. At this point, i do a normal start up and it somehow starts the Windows Update installation, and boots normal.

I install a few new things, and do another restart. This time, it does the same thing, yet doesn't start up. Just a simple restart cycle. I ran all the diagnostics again, and all of them came out perfect. The one from the computer store took like 6 hours, but everything passed. The only thing left i can think of is to flash the bios with the newest version, but before i did anything, i figured i would ask on here...PLEASE help me out! I need to get this thing going asap, and i don't want to tell her its doing the same thing it was! Thank you in advance, and sorry for the extremely long post...

BUD

 

How about not updating Vista?

Windows update is known to download the wrong drivers and install them causing havoc.

 

hmm...that is true. But with 75 updates, how would I ever go about finding what caused the problem?

 

one other question...if it does end up being something like that, why would diagnostics show a HD failure?

 

if you download the wrong drivers HD diagnostics would not show a HD failure, and if you boot from cd memtest should pop up before HD failure right?

and are you getting BSOD on every boot now?

 

i'm sorry, i'm not really following you first question. I can boot the diag disk because i can hit F12 for an alternate boot, but if i let it go on its own, it will fail. And no, its not a BSOD, windows hasn't even loaded yet. It is simply the first microsoft loading bar, hangs, then restarts and give me the DOS-looking screening telling me to use the arrows to indicate how i want to boot. But it won't boot!

 

so basically you can boot into safe mode but not normal boot?

 

no...i said it does not boot. meaning no safe mode, nothing. I can boot to a disk, of course, but not windows on my HD

 

I'm going to second Flipfire's advice here. Reinstall Windows and don't mess with the updates. Since your diagnostics are all clearing, this is almost certainly a software problem. Since you managed to get into Windows after the initial installation, before running the updates, it is almost certainly caused by Windows updates.

 

wolf is right, disable windows update, everytime I turn this thing on, my system acts crazy...if you need a certain update, just download it and install it yourself. good luck

 

Well...so far, i did a system restore to the earliest point in time, which was right after windows was installed. I then used the drivers disc to install all the drivers, and restarted after all that. It booted up perfect, and the device manager shows no other needed drivers. I went on to install some software (firefox, flast, pdf reader, etc) and the anti virus. I have done everything except windows updates, and restarted about 30 times to keep checking its condition. It still boots up perfectly, so i made a created a final restore point, and i'm gonna try windows update one more time. At this point, i am only installing the important updates, and will see how that goes.

If this does cause the problem for sure, do you guys disable updates completely? What about the updates for things like the Defender and all that? I have always had auto updates on my personal computer, and only had one problem. Would there be a problem just deleting all these updates, and then turning them on for any new updates after these?

Thanks for all your help!

 

Disabling windows udpate will always have the little red shield thing in the system tray.

It is also very easy for a user to accidentally turn on automatic updates (I know, I've seen my parents do it by mistake a lot) haha.

 

you can get rid of the red shield though. All you have to do is go into the windows control panel > security center > Change the way security center alerts me -> then basically tell it to not alert you about anti virus, update, or spyware. The obvious caveat being that you will not get a warning in the future if you lack security software.

Other than that, I wouldn't suggest turning off the update. I WOULD however, scroll through the list of updates and look for ones that are not windows related. Sometimes windows thinks, for example, that I have an xbox for some reason, and the updates for that always fail. You should be able to manually select a portion of the updates, check for stability, and then try grabbing a few more. Sooner or later you will identify which one is causing the system to hang.

Otherwise, I would just get the latest drivers from Dell herself before trying to run any other MS updates / patches. Good luck!

 

Well i got it up and going for her...I didn't install any of the window's updates, got all her drivers up and going, installed some more software for her, and gave it back. She only gave me a measly 20 bucks for a HD swap and full windows install (with an extra copy i had laying around, i must add). I wasn't about to go through any more trouble once I found out it was only for 20 bucks! Thanks for all the help! If it happens again, i know what to do, and she will get a bill next time!