Laptop stuck in a start up loop?

beefster

Looking for some advice if this can be sorted out without taking to a man who knows please.

Daughters laptop. lenovo N200 with Vista.
Sequence as relayed to me.
She spilt some water on it 2 weeks ago and on the quiet to save a ticking off from the horrible parents... took it to a local PC repair shop. New keyboard fitted and came back working apart from battery would not charge which she kept quiet.....
3 days later start up led to a blank screen.
Turned off and restarted and the micosoft start up bar went on for ages (hour plus) so she unplugged and restarted with no change.... thinking about the charging problem she took the battery out this time. Same result so she called me in.... Sheepish about what had happened but I got it sorted by using the Lenovo start and recovery button and restoring to the last restore date.... which i was suprised to find was in 2009??

Then starts up ok and works ok, however microsoft updates automatically starts and BT security / macafee is out of date. Once the windows uploads are installed it asks for a restart. On restart it says it is "configuring 3 updates" but never gets past 0%?? After a while it shuts itself down and goes through the same process. Restarts, says configuring... never gets past 0% and shuts down again???? then the loop carries on??

Following this restore, not sure if this is relevent?... before the windows update completed Macafee advises it cant update due to a missing part of the programme (cant remember exactly what it says) and it needs reinstalling. It then seems to attempt upload its own updates. At which point i went to make a cuppa... returning to find the Windows config screen loop underway.

I carried out another rescue recovery to same date and same scenario has occurred??

Can anyone advise if i can sort this out without returning to the repair shop. I have managed to recover my daughters school work from the C drive using the Lenovo rescue feature. Transferred to a remote hard drive.

Any advice most welcome.
Thanks

hubert_cumberdale

sounds like the killer windows update syndrome

seems to be happening a lot recently it happened to my PC did an update and killed it it destroyed the OS during the update so it can never finish. I did a format but i never keep anything i need on my PC for that reason i dont trust windows

davb

I would try the system restore again, but then uninstall McAfee and put on Avast instead - before connecting to the net and installing Windows updates.

beefster

Just as a query to that....

I'm using BTbroadband security which uses Mcafee...... Is there an issue with Mcafee and windows?? Given 95% of PC's have Windows installed surely Mcafee is compatable? What would uninstalling Mcafee achieve?

Ta

closed

Speed up your machine if nothing else

jbreckmckye

Just save yourself the bother and reinstall the OS. Recover any important data by just booting a live CD and forking things over to a flash drive.

Really, OSes are pretty 'disposable'. People think of a fresh installation as a rare event, one that only follows a catastrophe. Honestly, it's not a major thing. If you already have a CD with your drivers and essential software, it only takes an hour anyway. I reinstall every six months for the sake of OS performance alone. But then again, I *am* a junkie for playing with different operating systems.

beefster

Thanks JB,
Laptop came preloaded.
Soooo. Not being a pc junkie.... how do i do that??
Easiest way?

Thanks all.

jbreckmckye

Did the laptop come with any kind of installation media or disks?

davb

beefster wrote: »

What would uninstalling Mcafee achieve?

Two reasons, firstly it sounds like McAfee is messed up on the restore, so that could be causing a conflict with Windows Update. Secondly, in my experience McAfee is a very sprawling program, consumes a lot of resource, and slows down your system big time.

A full reinstall is obviously best, so as long as everything important is backed up, and you are happy to go with that, then:

Lenovo looks to have two means of restore:
1: It doesn't seem to come with disks, so you can create a disk set from a utility within windows - this is not ideal for you.
2: There MAY be a recovery partition. Power on, and immediately press the blue "Lenovo Care" key. This should take you to a menu where you can select "Full System Restore"
Remember, this will overwrite ALL your data and software, and set it back to as it was when new

beefster

Previously i have resored just the operating system.

There is a hard drive restore which i assume is what you mean. Yhis does have the warning that it will erase all data.

Will recover the full c drive info to my portable hard drive and give that a go.

beefster

Have saved the c drive to my remote hard drive but... got this message and before i go for the
"restore hard drive to factory settings"
Wanted to be sure it was right thing to do...

Unable to copy file: C:\system volume information\system restore\FRstaging\windows\bthsevsdp.dat. access is denied

Can anyone advise if its ok to continue??