My laptop was infected. So I used Malwarbytes and Hitman Pro to remove the infections. Then I updated it from Windows 8 to Win 8.1. After the upgrade finish, it rebooted and now only boots into SysPrep. I can't even boot into Safe Mode, I get an "installation needs to finish" error.
Also, once it logs into SysPrep, I log out of Administrator into my user account and use "net user administrator /active:no" command in Command Prompt and reboot, but still it boots into SysPrep.
I've also tried using msconfig and set it to Normal Boot, but again it restarts into SysPrep.
After leaving sysprep to return to oobe mode, during the initial setup stage, i get the error "Windows could not finish configuring the system. to attempt to resume configuration, restart the computer." However after restarting the computer, the problem still persists. This is not the first time I've exited audit mode but I have never had this problem before. Annoying since I waited two hours for dism to capture a WIM image of the hard drive only to find out I got this error! My OS is windows 8.1 Core (originally windows 8 with 8.1 update applied through store)
I'm working on a Toshiba L75D-A7283. Upon checkin, symptoms were booting up to a black screen to log in, then a black screen with cursor after that. Fixed that with a system restore point and a virus removal.My coworker upgraded the machine to 8.1 over the weekend without a Microsoft Account. When it failed, he put the machine into audit mode, I'm guessing so that we could have updates finished and have the system set up with a Microsoft Account when the customer came back in.
However, we can't get it out of audit mode. We've tried several things, including this:Sysprep Error with windows 8.1 At the setupact log, the error that presents is: spopk.dll: Sysprep will not run on an upgraded OS. You can only run Sysprep on a custom (clean) install version of Windows.
At that point the sysprep fails, and I'm stuck in audit mode after a restart. I don't know how to get this machine back to vanilla Windows 8 without a full reinstall.
A coworker spent the entire day getting a Windows 8 machine up and ready for imaging. As part of the process, he went ahead and let it update the metro apps from the store.
Big mistake: Apparently updating Metro apps breaks sysprep;
Sysprep giving "fatal error" -- but *only* after updating Metro apps?
Here is a KB article on the issue;
Removing or Updating Windows 8 built-in Windows Store apps causes Sysprep to fail
It's even being reported that simply "opening" a metro app will cause sysprep to fail on Windows 8; Techy Geeks Home: SCCM capture of Windows 8 fails during Sysprep stage - Fatal error occurred while trying to sysprep the machine.
1st partition is Win7 SysPrep and the 2nd partition is Windows 8.1 Sysprep. I install Win7 and press Ctrl-Shift-F3 to form SysPrep, same as Windows 8.1 in 2nd partition. I made this becuase I've 25 Dell new Windows 8.1 Computer which are UEFI. I want to clone it to the other 24 Dell computers.
CASE 1 : 2 different partitions with 2 different Windows : --------------------------------------------------------------- If I install both Windows like above, when Sysprep Generalize Win7, it works fine. But if I SysPrep Generalize Windows 8.1, it's fine also, but never can boot again back to Win7. The start boot option is like this : Windows 7 Windows 8.1 If I choose to boot Windows 8.1, it's fine. If I choose to boot Windows 7, it ever boot to Windows 8.1. It means nomatter I choose to boot which Windows, it all goes to Windows 8.1 ?
CASE 2 : 1 partition for Win7 + Win81.VHD : --------------------------------------------------------------- I install Win7 (C and press Ctrl-Shift-F3 to form SysPrep. I create a Win81.VHD in Drive D: , imagex Windows 8.1 install.wim in it. Also press Ctrl-Shift-F3 to form SysPrep. Sysprep Generalize Win7 is OK , SysPrep Generalize Windows 8.1 is also OK. But after that I can only boot to Windows 7 fine, when choose to boot Windows 8.1 , it always restart and back to the boot menu ?
I have a new Asus S200 noteboook and I'm trying to get used to it. I have burnt a repair DVD but I now want to test it. It seems that the usual means of getting into the BIOS no longer work, so how can I boot from the DVD?
In Advanced Startup there is the option to boot from a removable device.
It has an icon for a usb drive & a disk, which I assume means CD or DVD.
The question is, is this option the same as setting the boot order in the BIOS ?
I tried it just to test it & when restarting, the process hesitated like it was looking for a removable device. I had no device inserted.
Then my computer continued to boot like always. I was wondering if choosing this option would be a one time event or if it would change the boot order permanently ?
I was wondering if it's possible to take windows 7 from my first computer and install it to my new one that has windows 8 on it (windows 8 has problems with its wifi where windows 7 worked perfectly).
I'd like a feature in a Bios to enable an ISO on the HDD to be a selectable boot device.
Some MB's have a small Internet Browser built in to the BIOS which can be activated at boot time before loading the OS.
Perhaps even if loading a file system into the BIOS wasn't possible perhaps by selecting this type of option in the BIOS Windows could issue a prompt for the ISO once it could read the file system before loading the rest of its code.
My Windows 8 desktop PC was working fine up until yesterday when it wouldn't recognize my external dvd drive for some reason. I tried some troubleshooting steps such as deleting the upper and lower filters in the registry editor and everything was fine until I rebooted my PC.
Upon rebooting, I noticed an extremely long boot time (about 10-15 mins) which I found highly unusual but the computer worked fine until I rebooted it a 2nd time. The 2nd time after rebooting it, it was stuck at the HP loading screen so I left it on overnight to see if it would take longer to boot but to my surprise, it was still stuck at the loading screen when I woke up this morning!
Here are some specs:
OS: Pre-installed Windows 8 Model: Hp Pavillion p7-1459
All drivers should be up to date because I frequently run windows update.
I've made some configuration error but I can't remember what. I have a SD card with recovery drive on it which has been sat in my card reader for ever. Yesterday (I'm not sure if this is related) I was trying to make a Windows to go drive using 8.1 Enterprise Preview in a VirtualBox VM. This was to be on another USB key and didn't work as it was incompatible. This key is not in the machine.
Anyhow now when I restart I always boot to the SD card recovery drive. I have to take it out to boot normally.
BIOS shows C:/ top of boot order and msinfo shows C:Windows is the default (and only) boot entry.
Just installed Win 8 on a new hard drive. "Almost" everything works fine. However my scanner, colorimeter and a couple programs are not compatible. I do not need to use the incompatible hardware/software very often. But when I do, I would like to boot the computer into XP and use them. I've done some research on this topic. Partitioning the Win 8 primary drive does not appear to be an issue. But, can I dual boot 2 operating systems if Win 8 is now the primary and only OS on the HD?
Yesterday night I upgraded my PC to windows 8 with an old windows 8 installation media. Everything was going fine and i also restarted it yesterday but today morning when I powered my PC it went through the Dell Splash screen but after that the screen freezes with a black screen and after 1-2 minutes It restart and again the same thing happened.
I just bought a 16GB kit (8GB x 2). I put both sticks of RAM into my PC and it does not boot, nothing is shown on the monitor, no beeping noise, no error message. I used another PC and got the same thing. After trying out the RAM one stick at a time, I found one of the stick is causing the boot issues. If I used that stick of RAM on any of my 2 PC, it won't boot at all.
Is this RAM not compatible with my PC or is the RAM defective?
my computer has suddenly starting acting up:- I cannot enter my password due to no response via the keyboard I am using a MS Comfort 500 keyboard & mouse but this isn't the main problem as if I can open up the computer (and I can now and then) the cursor is very jerky and unresponsive, but now things have got a whole lot worse the computer is starting up in repair mode (didn't know this existed) but cannot repair itself so gives me the options of refreshing or resetting, now resetting seems a bit drastic as although I have my files on external discs and in the cloud I have never done a restore point and it seems as though a disc my have failed but as I cannot get into the computer I have no way of doing any other checks it could have been a virus that caused the problem, wish I had created restore point, if I do a reset I will loose all the programs on the c drive.
I have installed the full windows 8.1 on computer i restart my PC and it was all going normally until it reached the "getting windows ready" screen for half an hour and nothing happened.
It's not just your everyday slowness. I accidentally dropped my computer, not too violently or anything, and now it's having extreme lag.
Even before you boot, it takes about 3 minutes just to wait for the safemode options screen after hitting F8. So far, it's taken 20 to actually load the files and start safemode.
The only thing I can think would be causing this is the RAM cards were damaged? Or it might also be a softwear issue - I was running a high memory video game when it fell and shut off.
I have a Samsung 64 bit Notebook with Windows 7 Home Premium.
I have an alienware laptop running windows 10 tech preview on the main os drive and then a data hard drive, i have a fixed size VHD file stored on my D drive which is 60g so I boot to windows 8.1 setup and i mount the VHD, i go through setup like normal creating a new partition on the VHD and going foward like normal.... then it reboots like normal and trys to boot into windows 8.1 but i get an error saying that it cant find winload.efi with code 0x000000e i think it was......
Every time I boot win 8 says my password is incorrect and I have to manually type it in order to continue booting. I Am using Classic Shell. I dont want my laptop to ask for a password. With Classic Shell installed I got rid of charms bar and now I don't know how to make my laptop stop asking for a password.
I just installed Windows 8.1 Pro on a new SSD(did the install with the other drives disconnected). I have another one with Windows 8 Pro installed on it and a HDD for my files.
When I boot, Windows 8.1 is loaded automatically and afterwards, I can see the partitions in disk management for each drive.
Is there a way to have a choice of which OS to load at startup?
I recently put this computer together as a cheap media machine. Everything worked. It connected via onboard NIC to the internet, it had sound. No problems.
Then I upgraded by adding another stick of RAM. Same module 4gb. and all hell breaks loose.
I lost lost and internet. Media sound service couldn't start. Said something along the lines that found new hardward. And it wasn't communicating with my NIC card anymore.. I tried updated the drivers. No joy.
I contacted Biostar and asked for an issue. They recommend me to update drives and then reset bios setting to factory defaults. I tried that. No joy.
I then RMA's the vendor and got another mobo. Installed it and it had the same issue. No sound no internet.
Last nite I decided maybe I should just reinstall windows, but now my computer freezes on the bios screen.
attempting to setup a dual boot with Win 8.1 and Win XP.
Just a quick break down of my current setup:
a) Win 8.1 x64 is currently installed on my SSD on C: drive partition b) On a different SATA hdd I have an old Win 7 x64 installation that I'm not using any more on one partition
I simply want to replace my old Win 7 x64 installation with Win XP. Why do I want to install Win XP you may ask ? The answer is simple, I want to play some older games that aren't fully compatible with Win 8.1 x64 and neither run good in a virtual machine environment on Win 8.1.
The only thing that is stopping me from attempting this is, has to do with the Win 8.1 bootloader. I simply don't want to lose my bootloader, and I'm afraid that when I install Win XP it might overwrite my Win 8.1 bootloader which will most likely leave me without gaining access to Win 8.1. At the moment the Win 8.1 bootloader lists along with Win 8.1 my old Win 7 x64 installation.
Given my setup of hdd's up top, what would be the easiest way for me to load Win XP on my old Win 7 partition that will still allow me to have the Win 8.1 bootloader with a Win XP boot option on the bootloader menu ?
Should I disconnect my SSD and then proceed to install Win XP on the Win 7 partition and then afterward reconnect my SSD and then using EasyBCD add an entry for Win XP to the bootloader? Or will I run into an issue along the way?
I am looking into setting up a type 1, native hypervisor on my desktop (Xen, specifically). Would it be possible for me to load my current install into a VM? The hypervisor can be run from a live disk.
Was Wondering because When I used to do it on windows 7 I would Choose Install along side windows but it seems after installing windows 8 Grub Boot Loader is getting bypassed.
I Have a CPU it was Windows 7 Home Premium installed , i Got windows 8 downloaded from Microsoft . I installed it without a CD . I Extracted the .iso file and Just Click Setup.exe , it was really slow so i left it at my house , when i ome Home it enters windows 8 Home Screen . I am really confused , i thinks its gonna ask me Custom or Upgrade but when I'm home it just ask me what color do you want for your theme . I Inserted the windows 7 CD and Installed on drive B: ( B is a hard disk i made with diskmngmnt.exe ) and it boots to windows 7 , i want to shut down my CPU . I turned it back On ( Restart ) and it just shows me a black screen .
I have a friend who has tasked me with removing the dreaded "Interpol" scareware virus from his Windows 8 laptop. Sadly, this means he can't boot into Windows 8, as the virus just locks him out. How can I boot into Safe Mode, so I can run the "Power Eraser" tool from Norton (handy tip!) to remove it?
If this can't be done, how can I tell the PC to boot from the DVD-Rom drive?
Computer: Dell Inspiron 530 Operating System: Windows Vista home prem. upgraded to Windows 8 home Pro. 32 bit. BIOS Rev. 1.0.15 Hard drives: (# 1) Samsung 500 Gig with 2 partitions. (# 2) WD 500 Gig with 2 partitions. Clone of #1 Ram: 3 Gig
Problem: On start up with either drive, the system goes to a blue screen with a clock (different time zone) on pushing Ctrl + Alt + Delete a log in prompt comes on. After logging in a window with the circling dots and Preparing Windows comes on That stays on for about 4 minutes and then a black screen comes on. Pushing the power button will cause Shutting Down to appear breifly and then the machine shuts down. I have a backup of Drive #1 on an external drive.
I've got Windows 8 64 bit and I'm running it on a Gigabyte U2242 ultrabook on the max resolution 1 Yesterday, after booting up, I saw that the desktop is black, the icons are black/ invisible too, I can, however, see the taskbar.
On the other hand, the tile menu works just as intended.
The laptop has two video cards: Intel HD 4000 and a Geforce 650M, I've uninstalled the drivers for both under safe mode and reinstalled the latest ones.
I've read somewhere on the nvidia forums that the geforce driver can't be removed because v.304 comes with Windows 8. Is this true?