[RESOLVED] Windows 7 stops at splash screen

[Midknyte]

It did give an error code. 0x80042412

It does mention USB disks, so it's possible that is causing the issue. Follow Step 2 in the error message and try again.

The size of disk should not matter.

I figured you weren't using Acronis TI. That's what I use, so I have more experience with that than the Win7 restore.

[NickC]

Good catch - I didn't realize that was the error code. Thing is, I didn't have any USB disks attached to the computer when trying to do the reimage, so I wasn't sure what it was complaining about. I also made sure to unplug all USB devices except the keyboard & mouse. The only USB devices showing at boot-up were 2 from the front card readers (which were empty). Just to double check, I unplugged the front card reader cables - this time it only showed the DVD and new hard disk at boot-up. Yet I still get the same error.

Only reason I mention size of the drive is that when I searched some people said the Win7 restore was temperamental that way. And even the full factory restore from the 3 DVDs wouldn't work - they installed successfully but upon boot-up I just got a black screen with flashing cursor in upper left. I have no idea if this has anything to do with it. I will exchange the 500 GB drive today for a 1TB which matches the original one and see if that works. I did install Linux Mint to an external hard drive via USB and that's working smoothly so far. I'm using that to type here. But this indicates to me that overall the computer seems to be in okay condition.

Worse comes to worse, I suppose I could buy a straight copy of WIn7 and just install that - it shouldn't have any of these issues.

[NickC]

All fixed now! Returned the 500 GB drive and got a 1 TB drive to match what was in there. And Windows System Restore didn't bat an eye! Took a while, but in the end my computer was up & running!

Makes me wonder if getting something like Acronis TI instead of relying on Windows System Image is worth it.

Thanks again for the help!

[Midknyte]

Interesting. Acronis doesn't have that limitation. Like I said, I don't use Win7 system restore. The latest Acronis is a bit bloated for me, but it is a much more mature product.

[NickC]

I don't have much experience in this except to be doing regular Win7 system image backups. But yes, in this case it sure seemed like not having a matching drive capacity was giving errors. It just so happened that the 1 TB drive I purchased was nearly identical to what was in there - I'm not sure if changing brands but still having 1 TB size would also have had problems.

I was also disappointed that the factory recovery DVDs wouldn't work on the 500 GB drive. As I said above, it installed without any errors at all but simply would not boot. Seems like it too is highly dependent on the new drive being identical. I never tried to use this on the 1 TB drive since the system image restore worked. But my guess is that the factory recovery would have worked fine on the 1 TB drive.

I'll look into Acronis and maybe some competing products too but something that is more robust than Win7 default.