I am now a proud owner of a "Bricked" Vista installation!
I've been working lately on a hush hush(soon my friends, soon) project to delve further into my geekdom in the fantasy world. However, here is a good example of when good things, experimentation, and project development go bad!
My lovely new Laptop has Vista on it. Due to the difficulty of installing XP on it, i decided to stay with Vista, as driver support is non existent due to some of the components for XP. Since my wife uses it, and its a fairly easy and clean(and moderately safe(to the point she uses it)) OS for casual gaming, i never went through all the trouble of getting XP on it. This opens up a whole new can of worms and troubles i've never been previously associated with!
Mayhaps it wasn't the BEST idea to start with for the project, but, it APPEARED to be the cheapest!
The laptop has all the nice bells and whistles i needed, included, or so i though. The component most needed was Bluetooth, which is built in, as opposed to buying a bluetooth "dongle" it made it an easy choice for an experimentation flat bed, or so i thought. here's the story.
i attempted, using the bluetooth software(i assume its the M$ stack) on the laptop to connect to my device. i could get it to talk to the pc, but, couldn't fully access/connect to it for a stable peroid of time. so i went in search of a "compatible" "stack". You can test the stuff out, and purchase it later, with limited functionality. so, i went ahead and downloaded it, and installed it.
Much to my dismay, after following the instructions, it wouldn't work. The software actually Bluescreened vista upon starting it! Bummer!
So i proceeded down my path of attempting to fix it.
Problem 1: if windows fully loads, the bluetooth software starts up, and bonk, bluescreens the system.
Problem 2: if i am fast enough, i can close and STOP the software from starting, stopping the bluescreen cycle.
Problem 3: trying to uninstall the software via the programs uninstall feature makes windows say its not uninstallable(i'll get the full message later) as its not installed.
Problem 4: System restore won't go back as the "drive has errors" and has to check the system.
Problem 5: auto scan on reboot of the drives does NOT start automatically.
Problem 6: Following M$'s instructions to get it to work(apparently they haven't fixed it yet so it will auto run) doesn't work as planned.
Problem 7: running the diskchecker erased all the system restore points.
Problem 8: removing the service from starting windows for the bluetooth software does NOT stop the all drivers from loading. especially the offending one.
Problem 9: Windows Repair = useless as it can't find the problem, nor fix it.
Problem 10: all accounts are affected on the pc, including admistrator.
Problem 11: safe mode will not start with admin privlages. due to the disk corruption/repair, m$'s solution to run it that way doesn't work. SP1 boinked.
To sum it all up? Vista still = bad. i've never thrashed an OS install so bad I can't recover it. sad news, my logs are borked too!
Off PC backups are a must. i've got one to put on there, but, sadly its from back before i started the project. Doh!
Fear not, just a minor determent. more to come!
The project will continue!
I've been working lately on a hush hush(soon my friends, soon) project to delve further into my geekdom in the fantasy world. However, here is a good example of when good things, experimentation, and project development go bad!
My lovely new Laptop has Vista on it. Due to the difficulty of installing XP on it, i decided to stay with Vista, as driver support is non existent due to some of the components for XP. Since my wife uses it, and its a fairly easy and clean(and moderately safe(to the point she uses it)) OS for casual gaming, i never went through all the trouble of getting XP on it. This opens up a whole new can of worms and troubles i've never been previously associated with!
Mayhaps it wasn't the BEST idea to start with for the project, but, it APPEARED to be the cheapest!
The laptop has all the nice bells and whistles i needed, included, or so i though. The component most needed was Bluetooth, which is built in, as opposed to buying a bluetooth "dongle" it made it an easy choice for an experimentation flat bed, or so i thought. here's the story.
i attempted, using the bluetooth software(i assume its the M$ stack) on the laptop to connect to my device. i could get it to talk to the pc, but, couldn't fully access/connect to it for a stable peroid of time. so i went in search of a "compatible" "stack". You can test the stuff out, and purchase it later, with limited functionality. so, i went ahead and downloaded it, and installed it.
Much to my dismay, after following the instructions, it wouldn't work. The software actually Bluescreened vista upon starting it! Bummer!
So i proceeded down my path of attempting to fix it.
Problem 1: if windows fully loads, the bluetooth software starts up, and bonk, bluescreens the system.
Problem 2: if i am fast enough, i can close and STOP the software from starting, stopping the bluescreen cycle.
Problem 3: trying to uninstall the software via the programs uninstall feature makes windows say its not uninstallable(i'll get the full message later) as its not installed.
Problem 4: System restore won't go back as the "drive has errors" and has to check the system.
Problem 5: auto scan on reboot of the drives does NOT start automatically.
Problem 6: Following M$'s instructions to get it to work(apparently they haven't fixed it yet so it will auto run) doesn't work as planned.
Problem 7: running the diskchecker erased all the system restore points.
Problem 8: removing the service from starting windows for the bluetooth software does NOT stop the all drivers from loading. especially the offending one.
Problem 9: Windows Repair = useless as it can't find the problem, nor fix it.
Problem 10: all accounts are affected on the pc, including admistrator.
Problem 11: safe mode will not start with admin privlages. due to the disk corruption/repair, m$'s solution to run it that way doesn't work. SP1 boinked.
To sum it all up? Vista still = bad. i've never thrashed an OS install so bad I can't recover it. sad news, my logs are borked too!
Off PC backups are a must. i've got one to put on there, but, sadly its from back before i started the project. Doh!
Fear not, just a minor determent. more to come!
The project will continue!
there's actually a startup tab). If you do find something with the bluetooth crap, then it'll show you the name... registry entry... file names and locations. (I placed the RUN icon on my start menu so it may not be there on yours, but it will be in C:Windows somewhere and just create a shortcut to "run" on your start menu)
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