vista installation

[janela]

Help please!!!! Its Christmas Day, my daughter has started to install vista onto her new toshiba and we had a power failure just as it started to install. Now the power is back on, all we keep getting is an error message. Some of the forums I have looked at suggest that we need to find a repair option in the boot system but such a thing is not to be found. I really would like to help to get it going since it is Christmas and it is pretty much the only thing she has - being such an expensive item.

[mattie]

You have got a bit of a problem here.
As far as I am aware, new laptops only have a partial install of Windows, you complete the install.
The source files are stored on the hard disk and once installed completely, you have the option to create recovery disks. However, it sounds like the installation files have been corrupted during the power failure, if you are lucky, this is all that will have happened, and the hard disk will be unaffected.

If you bought it from a known retailer, they may be able to provide you with recovery disks, at a cost, Comet do this for about �15.

[ChuckFickens]

Why would a laptop be effected by a power cut? you should have had plenty of time to cleanly abort the install with it on battery

[ACtheTROLL]

don't toshiba have a maintenance partiion?

reboot the machine holding either f8 or f2
better yet ... look in the book

[janela]

Thanks for all of this. Yes, using F8, except that you have to press it repeatedly or hold it down to get the necessary menu rather than just pressing it once which we had been doing. The option to repair the computer came up except that it then prompted for a password which of course we didn't have. Unfortunately the book (which, yes eventually we studied in fine detail), didn't mention about passwords in this eventuality. So we simply ignored the password prompt and carried on from there. Thankfully this worked. Seems that not all laptops carry on like this type. My daughters friend had an acer, this one you just simply switched on and there it all was. From looking at the forums this problem of power failure for one reason or another is not uncommon when starting up a new laptop and I am sure that if you were sitting in front of it when the power goes off you might have time to do something about it but this did not happen in this case. Maybe these Japanese don't have power failures so don't feel the need to address this in the instruction book. Anyway we did get up and running finally so that Christmas Day was not a complete washout.

[ACtheTROLL]

now I see your problems

the password request isn't to enter a password ... its to create a new one
(all machines ask this - it's good ... not a bad thing)
.... a valid password is just to hit enter

I also bet that if you read the book again it will say you should charge the machine for about 24 hours BEFORE switching it on and setting it up.
Ithis charges and conditions the battery so you get the best possible performance from it

Once the battery is charged ... a power cut won't affect you ... because it's the battery that's always providing the power.

.... you'll know next time!

the battery thing goes for everything - mobiles, iPods etc etc
they all need a good first charge to kickstart them

the 23rd of dec should be called battery day