Hi all and can anyone help?

Thank you all for the advice and help, but I got nowhere, so I took the HDD out of the laptop, put it into another laptop and tried to intsall the OS on that machine, for some reason it worked and I'm now up and running, I also have the product key which has been written down twice and stored in a small safe I have, along with the disks.

So once again thank you all for the assistance, I'm very grateful.

Alan

You can mark the thread Solved at top.

So you know: this is an interactive forums where we give steps and you reply to those steps. Since there was little of this we were not able to help you get your problem solved.

Moving HD to another machine is a last resort steps which we might have given had you interacted with our help. It normally requires Sysprep to remove all drivers, HID, SID and activation: SysPrep to move HD to another computer. If this wasn't required then you got lucky.

Am still curious what a partial reinstall is.

I'm sorry if I haven't done exactly what has been described to me, but I'm completely new to this and was maybe looking for things that weren't there and getting myself confused, I looked on the HDD for a recovery partition but there was nothing there, it looks like the machine had been set up without one and to me I had no option but to install everything again. I think I'll get myself on a college course to learn how to do things properly.

You can learn all you need here as this is the top resource on the web for everything Win7, with Help and Tutorials equivalent to a university.

You chose to reinstall but didn't even acknowledge the Clean Reinstall Factory OEM tutorial I linked for you twice which represents thousands of reinstalls we've helped with here since before the OS was even released.

Nor did you reply to steps to fix unbootable Win7 which likewise have successfully helped tens of thousands of users. It was if you never even saw them.

Hi my name is George and I'm Alan's dad, I thought I'd better inform you of some things, Alan has autism as well as learning difficulties, with him having autism, he can be very clever but his other condition leads to more problems for him, in order for him to learn and help himself, I allowed him to sign up on this forum to find out what he can do for himself, like anyone else, he finds some things easy, some very hard, but he endeavours to fix things himself, as he gets older and his mother and myself get older, he knows that he has to try and do things himself and stand on his own two feet.
I know he hasn't done what he should have done via the advice given, but it's his decision to go the way he went and he did tell me he was struggling to understand, but he wanted as little as possible assistance from me, hence the problems he had.
When I explained to him what the comments meant, he was upset and doesn't want to ask anymore questions or advice if he's ever stuck again, so we'll sign off and won't bother anyone, ever again.

Hello George and Alan -

Thank you for clarifying as this is all I was asking. I like to understand why interactive help doesn't always work out and a learning disability is certainly one very good reason. There's also no reason why Alan or anyone should be embarrassed about this. We are happy to be as patient as is required. I only asked for clarification about why there was so little interaction with our advice and I appreciate your informing me why.

All the best,

gregrocker

I concur with Golden and Greg.

There is and never will be any deliberate intention to belittle anyone.

The fact that we now know that Alan has problems that are difficult to deal with explains some of the misaprehensions we may have been under and it is always difficult when dealing with people you can't see face to face.

I do hope George you reconsider your decision not to post anymore as we would like to help Alan as best we can.

Thank you for the replies, Alan has kept off the net for a few days as he tends to take things personally sometimes, when he gets upset I seem to wind up defending him or fighting his corner, while I can appreciate you know neither Alan or myself personally, it can take time to become accustomed to the way of things, you have offered good advice and its not taken for granted, Alan does like to do things his own way sometimes, this can lead to an occasional clash between us, within minutes things have settled down again though, those with family members with problems/conditions will understand the difficilties this brings.
Thank you for your understanding and patience, its very much appreciated.

One thing I'd like to add without trying to appear clever, there are two laptops and a desktop in the house and I can guarantee that at any one point in time, one of them will be in a state of updating or software installation and I get lost off sometimes, probably something to do with me being an old fart and a Luddite.

Cheers

George

You're welcome George.

Don't worry too much about being an old fart and a Luddite.

One, I can relate to that status and two, we help anyone here. We do not discriminate in any way, shape or form!