So I've got an Asus laptop belonging to a friend of mine i'm trying to fix.
It starts up so far, gets through the scrolling start of Vista, and then turns itself off. Same point every time. Sometimes i see an instant flash of a bluescreen, but thats it. Ive gone F8 and done a do not reboot on system halt, but it just turns itself off at the same point. I've tried last known good configuration, i've tried system restore, and I don't know what to try now.
Any ideas?

Try booting off the vista DVD and running a repair.

It should check the startup process and repair anything broken. May not work but its worth a go.

Did the laptop already have Vista installed on it before hand M.H.? Also, will it boot into safe mode?

Yes, it's a factory install of Vista. Yes I have tried to boot off my copy of ultimate, and the repair does nothing, and no, booting into safe mode produces the same issues. Apparently this issue only reared it's head after the owner updated it to SP1 via windows update. Whether this is the actual cause I don't know.

last edited by MrHardware at 13:07:23 24/Jan/09

^ Exact same problem happened to a friend of mines Asus Laptop. Right after you install SP1 it does this exactly haha. Had to reformat it in the end, sorry.

blast.

put windows me on it

my mate has a similar problem with his ASUS mobo. he recently upgraded and is trying to install vista again but cant even get that far. Apparently blue screens every time he tries to boot off the vista disc. Ram is fine, has new 64 bit cpu & mobo and PSU, 8900gt graphics card (i think)

anyone got any ideas?

Theres a lot of info on google about failure to boot after SP1, makes it hard to pinpoint a solution seeing you can't provide the actual error message.

Have a look at that, might help.
http://www.tipandtrick.net/2008/windows-vista-startup-hang-and-boot-failure-after-sp1-on-corrupt-driver-file-atapisys-and-ataportsys/


last edited by rubba-chikin at 15:51:05 24/Jan/09