Windows 7 endless reboot answer evades Microsoft

[Night Hawk]

Windows 7 endless reboot answer evades Microsoft

Microsoft support offers ideas, but some PCs still crippled after upgrade attempt

By Gregg Keizer
October 27, 2009 03:48 PM ET

Computerworld - Users remained stymied today by endless reboots after trying to upgrade their PCs to Windows 7, according to messages posted on Microsoft's support forum.

An answer has yet to be found for all users, who began reporting the problem last Friday after watching the upgrade stall two-thirds of the way through the process. Most users said that their PCs had displayed an error that claimed the upgrade had been unsuccessful and that Vista would be restored. Instead, their PCs again booted to the Windows 7 setup process, failed, then restarted the vicious cycle.

Several Microsoft engineers, including the company's senior group manager for Windows supportability, have offered advice, but on Monday users continued to publish complaints on a growing forum thread.
"I think I've gotten to the point where trying to install Windows 7 is simply not worth it," said "Chimaera717" around 1 p.m. ET today. Chimaera717 was one of the first users to gripe about reboot hell. "I'm more content with actually having a working computer. Anyone know if we can get our money back?"

Earlier, Microsoft support engineers posting to the thread urged users to burn downloaded upgrades -- which were delivered as disk image, or .iso, files -- at their DVD drives' slowest speeds to reduce the chance of corrupting the data, one possible explanation for the endless reboots. At the same time, one user pointed others to a document published last July on Microsoft's support site that spelled out a possible solution.

More at: Windows 7 endless reboot answer evades Microsoft

 

[Ben100014]

This is why clean installs are the way to go.....not upgrades.

 

[darkfriday]

This is why clean installs are the way to go.....not upgrades.

Yep. I went from XP SP3 to Windows 7 Ultimate with a clean and easy install

 

[Ben100014]

I went from Vista Ultimate X32 to 7 Home Premium x64, what an improvement, Ill tell you.

 

[Night Hawk]

I went from a 32bit dual boot of XP with Vista along with both 7 betas into the RCs and a fresh install of 7 retail 64bit on one drive while the 64bit RC is still on another. During the retail installation the RC wasn't even seen by the installer and not entered as a boot option. That was to be expected anyways.

In all this time however between betas abd RCs I never ran into any reboot problems with any clean install and even an upgrade repair install on one RC installation. That was with the dvd drive burning at the fastest speed as well until making up usb install keys.

 

[Ben100014]

Wow, that is quite a system setup you have there Nighthawk. I cannot imagine Tri-booting, I just wouldn't have the time to set that up or maintain it.

 

[Lucretius]

I think if I had to deal with such an unfortunate mishap I would abandon Win 7 altogether.

Thankfully, however, I was able to upgrade from Vista Home Premium to 7 Home Premium without a clean install ...and no problems.

 

[Night Hawk]

Wow, that is quite a system setup you have there Nighthawk. I cannot imagine Tri-booting, I just wouldn't have the time to set that up or maintain it.

Look around and you will likely find several screenshots of the various partitioning themes I've had over the last several months. This was all done across several internal as well as a few usb flash drives tossed into the mix. "5 sata BDs and a half dozen flash drives!"

Even with the beta builds as well as installs on Virtual machines none of the shutdown looping problems has been seen at all through all that. 7 has been a success story here so far!

 

[Dunsailing]

I did an upgrade from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 no problem (apart from a hic-up with my printer driver which was solved by people on Windows Forum).
If I had been experiencing constant re-boots, I think I would have abandoned 7 and gone back to Vista, but that would also mean money lost

 

[tbernstein]

Mine, prettymuch fine

My upgrade from Vista Home Premium to 7 went very smoothly, but I would have done a clean install if I'd needed to. I was prepp'd for that, with all my stuff on separate partitions, just in case.

The only problems were that HP ( curse them) only have ready a basic printer driver for my (supposedly) Multifunction device and a small number of programmes, e.g google sync, wouldn't work in my exisitng profile, so I needed to create a new one and copy my settings across: I have no idea why, they were fine in my wife's profile and are fine in my new one :huh:.

 

[garysgold]

Welcome to Seven Forums, tbernstein.

Gary

 

[Windows7Guru]

Yup, clean install.

 

[chuckr]

Windows 7 endless reboot answer evades Microsoft

Microsoft support offers ideas, but some PCs still crippled after upgrade attempt

By Gregg Keizer
October 27, 2009 03:48 PM ET

Computerworld - Users remained stymied today by endless reboots after trying to upgrade their PCs to Windows 7, according to messages posted on Microsoft's support forum.

An answer has yet to be found for all users, who began reporting the problem last Friday after watching the upgrade stall two-thirds of the way through the process. Most users said that their PCs had displayed an error that claimed the upgrade had been unsuccessful and that Vista would be restored. Instead, their PCs again booted to the Windows 7 setup process, failed, then restarted the vicious cycle.

Several Microsoft engineers, including the company's senior group manager for Windows supportability, have offered advice, but on Monday users continued to publish complaints on a growing forum thread.
"I think I've gotten to the point where trying to install Windows 7 is simply not worth it," said "Chimaera717" around 1 p.m. ET today. Chimaera717 was one of the first users to gripe about reboot hell. "I'm more content with actually having a working computer. Anyone know if we can get our money back?"

Earlier, Microsoft support engineers posting to the thread urged users to burn downloaded upgrades -- which were delivered as disk image, or .iso, files -- at their DVD drives' slowest speeds to reduce the chance of corrupting the data, one possible explanation for the endless reboots. At the same time, one user pointed others to a document published last July on Microsoft's support site that spelled out a possible solution.

More at: Windows 7 endless reboot answer evades Microsoft

I had responded to this, in an effort to help those guys with the "Endless reboot" problem,
to hopefully get back to a 'working' computer, with their rolled-back Vista O.S.:

The 'kb/974078' solution, provided at:
Continual reboot after attempting to upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7
will not work, because:

A.) There is no w7 'Boot Manager' menu to select from --- the computer is "continually rebooting"...

.... To resolve these issues, select Windows Vista instead of the default Windows 7 setup when you see the boot entry menu ....

@ JSchneider21 :
@ FJP57:

For those where the "upgraded Vista" results in a "Rollback" and "Endless-loop" of rebooting attempts:
Came across this which -might- make your system bootable again, after the "rollback" to Vista :

1. Insert the Windows Vista Media into the drive,

2. Set your BIOS to first priority = Boot from CD/DVD.

3. Then boot from that DVD , and when Windows Vista 'Setup' appears,

4. Get to an 'Admin' Command-Prompt by hitting "Shift and F10".

5. Type the following command at the command prompt and press ENTER

Drive:\boot\Bootsect.exe /NT60 All (Note: Drive: is the DVD drive where the Windows Vista installation media is located)

6. Restart your computer.

(It should boot into your old Vista installation.)
jcrmarker

Don't know if anyone's tried it yet.
(Those "MS forums" are a bear to navigate and work with...)

 

[Fluffy]

I went from XP SP3 to Win 7 HP x64 clean install. Lost a bit of data but do't care about that as the difference is immense.

 

[DarkDavil]

Wow, that is quite a system setup you have there Nighthawk. I cannot imagine Tri-booting, I just wouldn't have the time to set that up or maintain it.

Look around and you will likely find several screenshots of the various partitioning themes I've had over the last several months. This was all done across several internal as well as a few usb flash drives tossed into the mix. "5 sata BDs and a half dozen flash drives!"

Even with the beta builds as well as installs on Virtual machines none of the shutdown looping problems has been seen at all through all that. 7 has been a success story here so far!

Hah Same here Im sooo happy with Win7. I have Win7 x64, Ubuntu 9.04 x64, and a beta build of Ubuntu 9.10 x64, thought need to change my system into Win7 x64 and jst ubuntu 9.10 final ^^ Gargh...

 

[richc46]

Maybe, hitting f8, as it reboots, and making the hd the primary boot may work.

 

[Night Hawk]

There's always something with any new version of Windows that comes out especially for certain prebuilds. Those with custom cases generally are able to get past them. Yet sometimes it's not Windows or a patch by a manufacturer but a bad install.

 

[pbcopter]

I tend to always do clean installs because as hard as Microsoft may try, there is no way, in my opinion, to assure that an upgrade from a near infinite number of hardware and software combinations (software that may be installed incorrectly or written badly) will be trouble free. Just my two cents.

 

[Night Hawk]

That's a good observation! The one thing most people especially the novice user won't generally realize is the hidden clutter remaining on a present installation when going to perform an upgrade. The upgrade will tend to pick up on minor or simply unknown registry problems with the existing softwares as well as the present copy of Windows on.

 

[chev65]

The few installation problems I had was fixed by just clearing the cmos and starting over again. It worked on two completely different machines.