restored factory image

[outdoorjoe2]

I don't know what I am doing, first off. I restored the factory image on my HP pavilion PC, Vista 32 home premium from disks. When prompted to do a back up after rstarting with disk 1, it offered 50GB of storage on drive E, so I stored the backup of everything offered there. I believe I have two internal hard drives, a 320GB and a 500GB. After completing the image restore, upon restart, all I got was a black screen with a flashing cursor before windows loaded. I was able to figure out it was trying to load off the DVD drive, and was able to get it to load off the 320GB hard drive. On computer start, it now progresses to windows loading progress bar, then when that is complete, two files show up on the screen and the letter showing transfer from one file to the other moves across the screen. This has been going on for over 24 hours now. Help???

 

[house70]

I would recommend to leave the backup step for after the install and all the updates are done, i.e. the PC has a clean updated OS on it. That is the image you want to save.

 

[outdoorjoe2]

I have already completed the image restore from the disk set. Please reread this portion of my question-----

After completing the image restore, upon restart, all I got was a black screen with a flashing cursor before windows loaded. I was able to figure out it was trying to load off the DVD drive, and was able to get it to load off the 320GB hard drive. On computer start, it now progresses to windows loading progress bar, then when that is complete, two files show up on the screen and the letter showing transfer from one file to the other moves across the screen. This has been going on for over 24 hours now. Help???

The backup I refered to was at the start of the whole disk process, and I probably lost all the backed up stuff because I stored it to an internal drive. Oh well, crap happens. The issue is I have completed a factory image restore and I can not get windows to open.

 

[house70]

the backed up stuff should still be there if it's on a different drive. To make sure you don't get into it, just disconnect that drive until the restore is properly working. Leave only the system drive connected and re-do the image restore from the disks (choose to do a complete format of the system partition while restoring).

 

[outdoorjoe2]

the backed up stuff should still be there if it's on a different drive. To make sure you don't get into it, just disconnect that drive until the restore is properly working. Leave only the system drive connected and re-do the image restore from the disks (choose to do a complete format of the system partition while restoring).

 

[outdoorjoe2]

So you are saying to disable the 500 GB drive, hoping that is drive E that has the backed up stuff on it, then do a reinstall from the factory disks only on the 320GB drive with a complete reformat?

What about maybe I just disable the large drive and try a reboot. Maybe vista is trying to load all the backed up stuff off that drive?

Remember, I am in the dark here. I know just enough to be dangerous. Thank you for any ideas.

JOE

 

[house70]

You can try to just reboot from the system drive, the others being disconnected. See what happens. If it doesn't work, you can try to restore the OS from the disks (keep the other drives still disconnected).

 

[outdoorjoe2]

I am heading home in a couple of weeks, and have a nephew who is taking college classes and is up on this type of stuff that is over my head. I think the smart move will be to wait and let him have a look at this.

Thank you for your help. I will re post later if I still need help.