Formatted Hard Drive 3 Times Vista Setup
Apr 1, 2009
I've noticed some files on my hard drive and the Windows folder is reported as being created in 2006.Since 2006 I have formatted my hard drive 3 times using the Vista setup.I know for a fact that the last time I formatted and reinstalled was January 2009. Can someone explain why these files and the Windows folder shows an earlier date?? When selecting the Format command during setup does Windows actually remove everything form the hard drive? I have noticed that the format doesn't take very long, at least not half as long as it used to with earlier versions of Windows. If Windows doesn't actually remove everything form one's hard drive
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Oct 11, 2008
this is my 3rd fresh clean install, using both vista x86 and x64, and all new hardware as well (new mobo, hd's, cpu, ram, etc):
symptom:
after a day of two of creating a user account, the hd access starts to become excruciatingly slow, and gets slower with time. when you use explorer and want to access the hard drives, the system takes 3-7 seconds to open the folder. when browsing pictures, it takes 3-6 seconds to switch to the next, etc.
creating a new user account solves the problem temporarily, until a day or two passes, and then the same thing starts to happen!
what i've tried so far:
- disabled indexing (windows search service)
- disabled hard drive indexing
- tried booting up as ide, as well as ahci
- created new install with raid0, and same issue.
system:
* e8400
* asus p5q-e with latest bios
* 2 x 320 wd 3200aaks sata drives, 1 x 250 wd 2500aaks sata drive
* asus sata dvdrw drive
* 4 gb crucial ballistix pc2-6400 (ddr2-800)
i've noticed this problem accelerates even more when using the "sleep" power mode. but even when disabling this, it still happens.
i've googled for over 2 weeks. i've done 3 fresh installs, i've replaced all the hw, and used 3 different copies of vista ultimate, with same results!
update: here is a video of the problem:
Internet - windows vista hard drive performance issue
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Aug 13, 2009
I have attempted all the following to install. I corresponded with digital river who forwarded me three files for the Vista upgrade.After downloading via FireFox I begin the installation. Once the installation begins I get the following error message: "Cannot extract Windows Vista Setup to your hard drive. Please ensure that you can create files and folders in the same folder where VistaSetupPrep.exe was downloaded." Now, I have troubleshooted this way:
I have unprotected the folder that contains all the files and unclicked the Read Only option. I have attempted to copy and paste the install.wim and the boot.wim files into the source folder that is created after I have begun the install, as someone in the Microsoft Answers Forum suggested. I also tried to burn it to a DVD, which gave me another error message.
This is extremely frustrating as I purchased this OS on discount thinking it is an affordable alternative. I can also see that I am not the only one with this issue. So it would be nice if someone from Microsoft found a solution to this issue. I currently have Windows XP Media Center Edition SP 3.
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May 13, 2009
I am having trouble getting Vista to recognize the IDE hard drive I am trying to add. I have Vista Home Basic running off of my SATA HD and want to add IDE as extra storage. I have it all hooked up, IDE hard drive is set to master on same controller as my DVD drive, but windows isn't recognizing the HD properly, it recognizes it as a new drive, but it is coming up as a floppy drive, anyone have any idea how to remedy this? Will be watching thread for next 20 mins or so, will keep up on replies and supply additional info if needed.
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Jun 2, 2008
I just added two new 1TB My Book external USB 2.0 hard drives to my system. They come formatted and partitioned, but it is formatted FAT32, all of my other drivers are NTFS and so I went in to the Windows Vista disk management tool (sorry I don't remember what it is actually called but it allows you to see all of your drives, partitions, etc.) to do a quick format to NTFS. However, it seems to be taking hours to do this.
I am guessing and this is my question. Am I right in assuming that the reason this is not a quick format is because it is having to do a full format in order to convert the drive from FAT32 to NTFS? How long should it take to format a 1TB drive?
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Jul 24, 2009
I have just recently uninstalled windows 7 on my gateway MD series laptop I was dual booting with vista usually when i started up it would get a screen that asked me which OS i wanted to startup...then i deleted windows 7 via disk manager i formatted the drive now when i start up i still get the thing asking me which OS to startup even after it is already deleted it is a very annoying problem
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Sep 16, 2009
I have an eSATA drive formatted NTFS from my XP installation. Drive works fine from either XP or Linux (multi-boot machine) I had previously tried Vista on the machine but it saw the eSATA drive as unformatted. Gave the message "Do you want to format this drive?"
Very dangerous as an unknowing person may have actually formatted the drive and lost all their data. Interestingly enough, any time I've tried to access the drive, Vista ran a chkdsk on it at the next boot up. CHKDSK from Vista saw it fine and reported no errors. but could not read the drive once booted to the desktop. I eventually gave up on Vista and just did a Win7 install yesterday.
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Jan 9, 2008
ive noticed that my hard drives are loud at weird times? when im not doing anyting? its very annoying? is this vista or my hard drives?
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Dec 21, 2009
I have a Toshiba X505-Q830 and it came with Windows 7-64 bit, I play Counter-Strike competitively and the mouse acceleration could not be removed which completely ruined my ability to play the game. So I popped in my copy of Windows Vista-64 bit and formatted and installed. Now my laptop is without the proper drivers for the internet and I have searched high and low for them but nothing is working.
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Nov 22, 2008
I just installed a new hd WD500g sata to my box. Vista "sees" the new hd in device manager, but doesnt see it in "my computer. It is freshly installed and straight out of the bubble wrap,I was thinking gee, maybe it needs formatted...but i dont see that option anywhere...maybe im missing something.... i donno...first time i've run into this....usually the drives are "seen" right away.....
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Mar 26, 2008
I am trying to do a clean install on a newly built system but Vista can not see my SATA hard drive. I have a Seagate 7200 barracuda 320 GB SATA HD and a Giga-byte P35 Mobo. Not knowing if it was a Vista issue or a hardware issue, I put in a XP installation disk and XP could recognize the drive. I stopped the install and tried loading some drivers off of the disk from Gigabyte. Vista still can not see the hard drive, but now when I throw the XP install disk back in, it can not see the hard drive either.
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Feb 10, 2009
The Hard Drive LED light on my Sony Vaio keeps blinking EVERY SECOND. When it's really quiet I can hear it too, it's constantly writing. Constantly. I did my research - read all the threads on the net and so far I have disabled:
Windows index
Windows defender
Windows search
Superfetch
System Restore
Readyboost
Defragmenter
I have uninstalled google desktop.
The system is totally virus and spyware free, and the anti-virus is not scanning (schedule scan disabled). All Vista updates are installed. Nothing has helped. I've run out of things to disable. I'm running Vista Business SP1, Dual Core 2.2 Ghz, 3 Gb RAM.
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Mar 21, 2009
I am getting a new HP today with a 750gig hard drive. Vista Home Premium. 64 bit SP1. I've never used Vista. I seem to recall hearing in the past that partitioning a drive so large is better than having it be just one 750 gig unit. If so, I want to partition it optimally from the outset. So:
1) SHOULD I partition my 750 gig C drive?
2) If so, how is it done? Do I go to Computer > Manage > Disk Management like in XP? (I've never used Vista.)
If I should do it, will I need to reformat to NTFS or will it already be NTFS? And should I use the "Quick format" option or the slow version? (Never did know the difference when I reformatted external drives, but I used the fast version.)
On my external drives I erased everything and then reformatted. Obviously I won't want to do that here, as it comes loaded with the operating system and MS Works, etc. So how do I partition without erasing files?
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Jul 1, 2009
I was wondering how I would install Windows XP on my harddrive that has Vista on it WITHOUT formatting or uninstalling Vista.
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Apr 7, 2008
I installed Vista Ultimate about a year ago, and a few months later also installed Suse 10.2 and I know dual boot, GRUB handling the boot. I have no problems whatsoever running either OS, and they are both installed on the same physical disk, just different partitions. Now, here's the strange thing: If I open disk management, the C-drive is visible and listed as healthy. If I run the Vista backup app, it can't even see the hard drive it itself is Installed on! A while back I had problems installing a patch, and through Googling it started having suspicions that the patch problem could have to do with my dual boot setup (the patch had to do with the disc encryption thing), so I thought I'd restore Vista's boot record and delete the Suse partitions, but when I start from the DVD and select repair, it can't see the OS.
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Oct 2, 2008
I want to make my pc more efficient. is here a way to know if i'm using an efficient hardware combinations? i'm using vista ultimatex86, 1gb of ram 80 gb of hard drive, Ecs g31tm Motherboard And Intel Core2 Duo E4600:
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Mar 2, 2009
i have vista home os system its a dell inspiron 1501 2 gigs of ram and a 80 gig hard drive but when i log onto my system it says i have a 60 gig hard drive can anyone help i just want to find out why it does this
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Jan 26, 2010
I haven't been able to figure out something with the Vista Home Premium 64 bit operating system.
My other non-booting hard disk (IDE) of 300 gb recently died, so I got a SATA Segate Barracuda 1.5TB disk. It is working fine. I formatted it without problems. Under the properties box it shows Capacity: 1.36TB, and the drive is indexed for faster searching. As far as I know too, there is nothing set up on it for System Restore.
However, I am now running into a very strange problem copying files to this disk. Even with 1.36TB on it, I can only copy up to 131 gb of data to it. After that Vista refuses to copy anything. I am very suspicious about the 131 gb limit that I am finding, that must be significant. I have also tried to search in the BIOS choices, but couldn't find anything there. It is an ASUS M4A79 Deluxe motherboard, with 5 SATA ports, which I am using #1, #2, #3, and #5, if that matters. I thought about switching the SATA cable for the Seagate drive from #5 to #4, but since Vista sees it as 1.36TB it seems that there wouldn't be any difference.
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Mar 23, 2008
im haven a problem with my second hard drive the problem is it dont show up on vista. i had window min, both drive was working fine. i format both drive only one work
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Mar 23, 2008
I recently acquired a new Sony Vaio laptop computer with Vista pre-installed. how to remove all of Vista from my machine without using a fairly large hammer on the hard drive? I would like to get back to some pleasant computing with XP.
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Mar 23, 2008
I am trying to do a clean install on a newly built system but Vista can not see my SATA hard drive. I have a Seagate 7200 barracuda 320 GB SATA HD and a Giga-byte P35 Mobo. Not knowing if it was a Vista issue or a hardware issue, I put in a XP installation disk and XP could recognize the drive. I stopped the install and tried loading some drivers off of the disk from Gigabyte. Vista still can not see the hard drive, but now when I throw the XP install disk back in, it can not see the hard drive either.
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Feb 25, 2010
I currently do a complete PC backup with Vista Ultimate 32 bit to an external hard drive. I am buying a new computer with an Intel® Core™ i7-920 Processor and Intel® DX58 Chipset. I believe this is a 64 bit system. Two questions... First of all, can I restore my 32 bit files to it? and secondly, my new computer has a larger hard drive. Is the larger hard drive a problem when restoring?
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Oct 15, 2009
For the longest time, Vista seems to have been reporting my hard drive usage wrong. Most recently, it said around 23GB free (of a 200GB hard drive, 178GB after recovery partition and other). When doing a manual count I get nowhere near that. Just from programs, personal files, and system files I can find I get a discrepancy between actual and reported of about 30GB. Then when I just ran Windows Update (17 new important updates today), the free space jumped to 47GB. This obviously isn't a problem now (although over time the usage it seems to creep back up to where it was), but does anyone know why this happens? Is it really just cleaning up 20GB-worth of fragmented or old files as part of creating a System Restore point or something?
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Jun 3, 2008
I have hard drives from both Win 98 SE and XP machines. I currently use a system with Vista 32. Is it possible to hook up these drives to my Vista machine and transfer the data to the Vista drive?
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Apr 9, 2008
I am having tons of issues with my pc (vista home premium). I think the registry might be corrupted. No one seems to know how to remedy the problems. I was thinking about using the recovery dvd's for my laptop. i use this pc for work and have thousands of email, onenote, vpn....etc. i understand this will erase my hard drive and one of the problems i am having is "windows back up" doesnt work (ironic)... is there some sort of way i can back up my computer then reinstall vista(use recovery dvd) and transfer that backup to my laptop. If i create an image with back up software will that just reinstall all the corrupted files (registry..etc)...is there anyway to reinstall vista without erasing the hard drive?
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Mar 15, 2009
I am trying to import an OE6 Identity from a second hard drive that had been previously used as the boot drive for my computer, on which I was running XP and using Outlook Express 6 (OE6). I rebuilt the computer with a fresh installation of Windows Vista on a brand new hard drive. Now I am trying to set up Windows Mail and tried "File | Import | Messages | Outlook Express 6" to transfer the old files over, but on the "Specify Location" window the "Import mail from an OE6 Identity" option was greyed out and not given as an option. So it won't let me point to the old hard drive Itentities folder to import the old folders and message files.
I couldn't load Vista as an upgrade to XP because I was going from 32 bit to a 64 bit sytem. So during the installation, Vista didn't recognize I had a previous load. I think Vista is too smart thinking I don't need the option so it isn't offering it.
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Mar 1, 2009
Hard drive died, replaced, reloaded Vista Premium x64. I can read the files on the bad hard drive, have attached as an external drive and want to transfer all Windows Mail files to the new hard drive and then restart Windows Mail. Is this possible? Can all files be transferred? The files and folders are in (user name)/App Data/Local/Microsoft/Windows Mail. Can I just replace the Windows Mail folder with the folder from the old drive? Are there additional files that will need to be copied?
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Jan 9, 2009
I need to reboot my Vista Ultimate (I know how to do this, I'll use the Recovery CD that came with my laptop), but I don't want to lose the files on my hard drive. I also have no way to access my hard drive at the moment (I tried restarting and pressing F8 and all I got was the message I initially got, below).
I got impatient at my ASUS M51 T9500 laptop freezing, so I pressed the "On/Off" button for a long time, got the computer to turn off and then pressed "On" again. The computer started, but Vista wouldn't come up. I got this error message, which I keep getting when I do "Ctrl Alt Delete" (I don't know why I tried that, I just hoped it would help) and when I restarted and pressed F8: Windows Boot Manager. Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:
1. Insert the Windows installation disc and restart your computer.
2. Choose your language settings, then click "next."
3. Click "Repair your computer."
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Apr 13, 2008
As far as I can tell the Vista clock does not take into account that Great Britain time is UTC+1 during the summer. It is currently showing UTC and London time being the same.
Is there a setting I'm missing? I have my local time set as Pacific time and
UTC is off by one hour as it is using Great Britain time as UTC.
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Jun 19, 2009
Is it illegal to use the same Vista Disk on the same computer 2 times?
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Jul 29, 2009
I have a ASUS laptop running Vista Home Premium, 64 bit OS. I have several programs that I use but no loner have the insall disks for. Should I have to reformat in the future I would hate to lose them. Here's what I'm thinking: Buy a extrenal hard drive. Seagate, 1Tbit, usb, cost $90.00. Copy my hard drive to it. If I need to reformat. Reinstall Vista from my recover disk that came with the computer. Then copy files from external drive. Bingo. All my old programs would be there and working. Question is: Can this be done?
What file/folders do I need to copy to the external drive?
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