Problem: Vista won't start, kept going into Windows 98?

My brother has a Asus G1 notebook and he's using Windows Vista Business 32-bit (upgraded from Windows XP). However yesterday his graphics card starts to react badly (screen would randomly freeze and then turns black and then became normal again). According to him it seems after some normal Vista windows updates the problem occur.

I tried updating different new nvidia drivers (I know how to do it correctly, I've done it a million times on my notebook) but the problem remains and it seems from GPU-Z it says the graphics card seemed down-clocked (not running at full speed). I've checked that the power settings in Vista are set to high so that's not the problem.

I then tried to flash the graphics card bios (following the instructions on this thread : http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=160237 ). (I know how to do this correctly coz I've done it in my own notebook too)

When I use my USB to flash, it says there is an error so it couldn't be flashed. So I removed my USB and thought I would go back to Vista and see what's wrong with the Bios.

However, when I restart his notebook, it now says it's in Windows 98??? (only the command prompt of windows 98 shows up, and then it says couldn't found E: recovery file or something???) And I have no idea how to make it start up Vista again... Pressing Crtl + Alt + Delete will only restart the notebook which will go back to the command prompt.

My brother don't have the Vista upgrade CD with him and he only have the windows XP recovery CD with him but that's no use because if we choose recover Windows XP it says it will delete everything in the hard drive. (he has some stuff inside the hard drive) So now we're stuck in Windows 98's command prompt) and have no idea what to do...

Please help. Thanks.


My guess of the problem is that it has something to do with this part in that thread:

"HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool - v2.1.8
Quote:
Windows 98 System Files

Extract all these files into a temporary folder. Then when you run the HP USB Format Utility select the directory for your bootable files."


Maybe for some unknown reason his notebook decides that it likes Windows 98 more than Windows Vista? lol But anyway please help.

 

well it sounds like the USB Stick had bootable Windows 98 on it and it started setup and started copying files. I think the only thing you can do is get a copy of a vista dvd..shouldnt matter which edition because they are all on there and boot it and run vista recovery or.....

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/

get access to another pc and download and burn it. You can try that.

 

Thanks, I may try that. But does that mean it would delete everything on the hard drive if I run vista recovery?

 

or you could take out the harddrive and put in a enclosure, copy the data out and reformat.

 

I have no idea how to do so... Probably too complicated for me.

Trying out the Vista recovery disc now...

 

oh, what I mean is to make the harddrive become external harddrive, so you can just copy the data you wanted then you can put back the harddrive to the notebook and reinstall vista

 

Yea I know, but I'm really bad with the hardware stuff... (never done it before )

I just used that recovery disc (downloaded and burned the image) and tried fixing it but after it says it fixed it, it still restart in Windows 98. I then tried clicking on "install Vista" on the disc but then it came up with an error saying that some file is missing... Maybe I do need to get a real Vista disc if I wanna install it... coz the downloaded image disc doesn't work.

Thanks anyway.