WINDOWS 7 HELP - Panickiiinngg!

[emzy]

Hi guys,

I finally got round to doing the Windows 7 upgrade that I got sent from Dell a few months ago... I what it said, let it delete my wireless card's utility as it asked... off it chugged for an hour or so. It was on the last step (the transferring files or whatever) and I thought it'd finished but it just came up with a screen saying "The upgrade was not successful. Your previous version of Windows will be restored" and "Do not switch off your computer at this time.".

And since then its been continuously restarting itself, it comes up with the Dell Loading screen then gives me the choice between choosing "Windows 7" and "Windows Setup Rollback" but automatically chooses the Rollback thing after 3 seconds. It says "Windows Starting" then goes straight into the same screen about the upgrade being unsuccessful and restarts itself again.

After half an hour I'm starting to get quite worried...

What do I DO?!!?!?!

[DaSloth]

I presume you have windows vista as your original OS? If you have a Vista DVD (probably didnt come with the PC but it might) then you can use the restore feature which will try and fix vista for you and shouldn't lose any data.

did you back up your data? If you did then personally i would get the windows 7 disk they sent you and just do a format and full install (will be cleaner than an upgrade)

If you didn't you're in a bit of a predicament which will be hard to fix by yourself If you need the data and you have a good friend who knows their stuff, they can take the hard drive from your machine and put it in another PC as a "slave" and recover the data ready for you to wipe it and start fresh.

I'd start with the Vista disc and try and repair.

[MattW]

You will need vista running regardless. Even if you do a "clean" install, it has to see an authorized copy of XP/Vista running before it will do the install.

That said, I think getting Vista up and running is the only real option, and hence probably re-installing Vista.

I guess calling Dell might also be an option??

[DaSloth]

It seems that you can do a clean windows 7 install with Dell's window 7 upgrade disk

[MattW]

You can do a clean install with the retail version, but I "believe" it has to be able to find a legit Vista on the HD. Can't remmeber if it's in teh official documentation, but I definitely found it stated on line.

I did the "clean" upgrade just last week

[DaSloth]

Fair enough, i've not done an upgrade but a quick google seemed to suggest they give you both options on the dell forums. Was there a "custom" option when you went through the install?

(http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=435401)