Repair Install

Hi

I'm a bit confused as to what has happened so I'll explain what has gone on:

1. I followed the guidelines step by step and all looked good then at the very end of Step 10 I got a message saying "The Upgrade was cancelled. Any changes that were made to your computer during the upgrade process will not be saved. Install Windows - Windows installation cannot be completed because a required driver could not be installed" Then something about Windows Setup Rollback.
2. I got some more error messages and I thought the whole thing was doomed, then I think maybe after I rebooted? Step 12 came up where I installed the product key. Then it went through to Step 17 all OK. So I was hoping that the initial message I got was wrong and the upgrade had in fact worked.
3. After computer booted up again I was expecting the desktop to be the same as what it was like before I started the upgrade with all my shortcuts on it and all my programs to be installed and operating. However the desktop was basically blank apart from the Recycle Bin and when I clicked on the Start Button it looked like all my programs had gone also. All I could see were the standard programs installed under Windows including Internet Explorer. This relates to my C: but my E: drive which contains all my data files and key settings including outlook.pst, desktop, favorites etc was still intact as I would have expected even in the event of a complete catastrophe.
4. I panicked a bit and spoke to my nephew who is our family computer guru. He couldn't understand what had happened and thought all my program files should still be there. After a bit of discussion we couldn't work out what had gone wrong but agreed that it had and I would need to manually reinstall all my programs. As we say here in Australia, I was not a happy camper at that time.
5. I have installed to date the motherboard drivers, got the internet working again and installed Office 2010 and now have Outlook working, although I haven't imported my outlook.pst file to it yet.
6. Snooping around a bit more in Windows Explorer I have just discovered three different folders in C: that start with $. including C:WINDOWS.~Q. This particular one has the missing program files in it + my data files.
7. Looking at the instructions in this forum more I see that that I should have taken more notice of Step 18 where it says to check for any missing user files and then mentions the above folders. My brain just didn't relate user files to program files.
8. Now I have stopped the manual reinstallation of all my programs realising that I have probably jumped the gun and there is probably an easier way.
9. Can someone please steer my in the right direction as while Step 18. talks re copying the missing user files I'm a bit confused at to exactly what I need to do. Do I just copy and paste them to the relevant Program Files folder? I was hoping that things like all my Outlook View settings, desktop shortcuts etc would all end up exactly the same way as they were before the upgrade. What if anything can I do now to try and achieve what my initial aim was, with as little pain as possible?

Many thanks from John

Hi Shawn

Thanks for your prompt reply. As I'm sure you know when you get major computer dramas you want to get it going again quicly so it's nice to have someone working with you. To give you some more info and ask you some more questions:

1. Before the install I disabled the Resident Shield on AVG Free. This supposedly disabled the Shield but kept the email scanner and other virus protection features active.I also logged in as Administrator and I know for sure I selected the Upgrade option, not the custom install one.
2. At Step 8 during the compatability checks I got several messages. I forget exactly but one had a red icon next to it like it was really important and the two others had just yellow warning icons like they weren't quite as critical. I only wrote down the details of one message which was "Upgrading Windows will affect the following programs - ATI Catalyst Control Manager and ATI Catalyst Control Centre. They may not work properly after upgrade. We recommend uninstalling before upgrading via Control Panel" After consultation with my nephew we decided that it wasn't a big deal and we could reinstall the progs after there was a problem so we just left them installed. I'm pretty sure this warning just had a yellow icon next to it. I can't recall the other messages but I recall that I did spend a bit of time during this step and had to reboot the computer at least once so by the time I got to Step 10 I think that the ATI message was the only one there.
3. I'm concerned that there may still be some underlying issues with my upgraded Windows 7 software. To date I haven't put in a lot of extra time installing my extra programs and adjusting all my settings and views. I'm wondering if I should bite the bullet now and just do a complete fresh install of Windows 7 (ie not an upgrade) before I spend any more time on it. Do you think this is worth it? In my case all my programs and operating system are on my C drive and my data and photo files etc are on E and F drives. Does this mean that if I do a complete fresh install of Windows I can leave my partioning as it is and just install Windows 7 straight to C drive. This to me means that it would be very similar to what I have done now but would be cleaner with less chance to go wrong. Considering it looks as though I've already lost all my program files to my mind I can't be any worse off than where I am now - although maybe I need to save some of the User Settings on C drive beforehand if I decide to go down this path. What do you think Shawn?
4. I've looked again at the C: Program Files and Program Files (x86) folders but there are definately no other programs in there apart from the ones I installed last night after the upgrade. Are you saying that if everything had worked properly that all my originally installed programs would still be there?
4. I've looked more closely at the C:$WINDOWS.~Q/Data folder that contains the Program Files and Program Files (x86) folders. I still don't really understand what you're saying in Step 18 but in my inexperienced mind I was hoping that as a backup solution I would find the missing program files in here and I could somehow copy and paste them to the C: Program Files and Program Files (x86) folders and avoid all the time of reinstalling them. Now I look I can see that while the folders contain other files they're not the full program files and are just settings or something else? Can you please explain to me exactly what the files are and what use if any they are to me?
5. Continuing from 4. I'm still confused about what you're saying in Step 18. What are the sort of user files you are talking about and how do I find them and what do I copy them to? Maybe this is no use to me now in my current situation but I just want to understand what's going on.
6. One of my installed programs is called MYOB and is an accounting software package. It was installed directly in C: and not in either the C: Program Files or Program Files (x86) folders. I can see that this folder called "Standard 19" is still installed in C:. When I drill into the folder through Windows Explorer I found the application icon and after double clicking it the program opened. However when I try to open a data file I get an error message saying "Error 9004 was encountered when opening the M-powered services data file. Contact MYOB Support" I can do this to see what's going on. The strange thing is that when I go to Start-All Programs MYOB Standard 19 is not listed. Also when I go to Control Panel - Add and Remove Progs it's not listed there either. No matter whether I leave the upgrade as it is or do a complete fresh install of Windows, I'll probably reinstall MYOB to be safe anyway but I can't understand why I can't see the program anywhere on my computer? Have you got any comments?
7. I have a backup file of "Desktop". Can I just re-use this instead of redoing all my shortcuts? What do I need to do and if some of the programs aren't installed when I do this will I end up with a desktop full of error messages?
8. When I look at the folders on my E: and F: partitions there are also some $xxx folders installed there now. What is the purpose of these? I'm assuming these can be safely deleted after I've got everything else safely sorted out as per your Step 19.

Thanks again Shawn. It's only 8am in the morning here now and I haven't got to work so I can commit the day to sorting things out once I work out the best way to do things.

Bye

John

Hi Shawn

Sorry for the long winded post last time - I was just trying to give you a bit of feedback on what happened. Can you please help me on an important decision I covered in my last post?

Should I just bite the bullet and just do a complete fresh install of Windows 7 (ie not an upgrade) now, in case there are still any underlying probs with the upgrade?

In my case all my programs and operating system are on my C drive and my data and photo files etc are on E and F drives. Does this mean that if I do a complete fresh install of Windows I can leave my partioning as it is and just install Windows 7 straight to C drive. Then all my data files on E and F will stay there the same as the upgrade - I'm assuming?

You mentioned a C:\Windows.old folder but I can't find this anywhere on C: Have you got any thoughts on this.

Thanks again

John

I think if you were to poll the most experienced members on this site, they would tell you to do a fresh installation. I would be especially concerned by the lack of a C:\Windows.old folder on your C:\ drive... that has always been there after each of my many Repair Installs.

Hi stevieray

Thanks for the advice. As someone who is fairly inexperienced that made sense to me. I am a fair way down the drain anyway so may as well fix it all properly while I'm stuck down there. My main concern is ending up in a worse situation than i'm in now, in particular losing my data. As I said In my case all my programs and operating system are on my C drive and my data and photo files etc are on E and F drives. Does this mean that if I do a complete fresh install of Windows I can leave my partioning as it is and just install Windows 7 straight to C drive. Then all my data files on E and F will stay there the same as the upgrade - correct? Any other potential probs i should look out for?

Thanks

John

Are your E and F drives actual, physically separate units or are they simply partitions on one single physical drive?

Hi stevie ray

They are partitions on the one physical hard drive. We set up the partitions when we did the original Windows 7 install a year ago. I'm assuming there is an option in the install process to leave partitioning as it is and just install W7 to the existing C: drive. I would just like confirmation of this from someone in the know.

Thanks

John