computer unusable after system restore crashed

sockdrawer

Windows installed a few critical updates over the past couple of days. For some reason these always affect my computer badly (internet access disappears, that type of thing) So I did what I usually do and ran a system restore from just before the updates were installed. It crashed half way through.
I rebooted, but it will only boot in safe mode, worse still, none of the diagnostic programmes, system restore etc will work. Even using my windows system disc to try to repair I'm having no luck.
Error messages include "To use system restore you must specify which windows installation to use" -this is when I specified windows 7 (32 bit) "startup repair offline" etc.
Can anyone advise please?

Basil1234

this sounds like you have a dual boot system or you are running a 64bit system and windows is corrputted the safest and easiest way to correct the issue from what i'm hearing is delete all partions, do a full format of the drive not the quick one. then completely reinstall from fresh this should get rid of any issues repair any bad sectors of hard drive etc etc. also with fresh install you know only dealing with one os and no corruption issues then do all your windows updates first then reinstall any software after that all done and good to go.

sockdrawer

Basil1234 wrote: »

this sounds like you have a dual boot system or you are running a 64bit system and windows is corrputted the safest and easiest way to correct the issue from what i'm hearing is delete all partions, do a full format of the drive not the quick one. then completely reinstall from fresh this should get rid of any issues repair any bad sectors of hard drive etc etc. also with fresh install you know only dealing with one os and no corruption issues then do all your windows updates first then reinstall any software after that all done and good to go.

Thanks Basil, what we did was plug the hard drive into my husband's computer, backup all the files etc, as belt and braces lift all the docs etc off there with an external hard drive. sorted the mail accounts with the laptop, and are now preparing to do a fresh install. Very useful to know we have to do a full format rather than quick one. Thank you so much for your help.