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[aislinwolf Profile]

I had Windows XP and decided to upgrade to Windows Vista. Since I have installed Vista every time I try to restart my computer in general it shows the compaq logo screen(with setup choices) my drives flash, the floppy stays lit and my screen is black. Nothing happens. Well I came across VistaBootPRO and it looks promising. I just do not understand how to use it. Will it fix my restart problem? And if it can, will someone who knows about this program very well walk me through the process, please?

[yeshuas]

How did you install Vista, e.g. while booted to XP, or did you reboot with the install disc in the drive?

Were you trying to do a dual boot, e.g. did you create a partition for the Vista OS and try to leave XP on a partition

Are you able to get to any OS?

[aislinwolf Profile]

Well first off, I had Windows XP on my computer first. Then I decided to upgrade to Vista. My computer was working just fine before I installed Vista (which means I could restart no matter if it was updating or program installing asking for a restart). I rebooted the system after I installed Vista. I wasn't trying to do a dual boot(whats that) I only have one drive and that's C: which is where xp use to be and now Vista resides on that drive. My computer turns on when I push the Power Button on the CPU. It is when it asks for a restart after installing a new program or running updates on it or just restarting that nothing happens. My screen just goes blank.

[yeshuas]

are you able to get into Vista at all now, or do you just get a black screen when you boot your computer?

[aislinwolf Profile]

yes i can get into vista only when I shutdown my computer from the Start menu and can only get back in pushing the power button....ON. It is only when I try going to the start menu and clicking on restart computer and after I click it acts like its going to reboot but nothing happens the screen turns black. Just blackness. Then I have to push my power button on my cpu and restart it like that....from the main power button.

[yeshuas]

VistaBootPro won't help with that issue, VistaBootPro as well as DualBootPro are both for editing the BCD store that takes care of the booting.

It sounds like there may be a program that is not fully shutting down or is keeping Vista itself from shutting down when you try to restart/shutdown via the Start menu. There maybe one that didn't quite get completely switched over or is not fully compatible with Vista, which happens a lot when you do and upgrade as oppposed to a clean install.

What antivirus program are you using, what video programs do you use, what programs are listed bottom right on the taskbar?

[aislinwolf Profile]

I was told by several people it is my BIOS or Boot files. Vista is different than XP...vista has bootmgr and XP has boot.ini so it overrides Vista. All I know is it deals with my bios or boot files.

[JabbaPapa Profile]

I was told by several people it is my BIOS or Boot files. Vista is different than XP...vista has bootmgr and XP has boot.ini so it overrides Vista. All I know is it deals with my bios or boot files.

I really must concur with the advice given by yeshuas higher up in the thread -- your computer is booting correctly when you power it on, so that the boot files are properly configured.

Therefore, the problem on your rig has to be a more fiddly one.

Daniel has suggested that your computer may be crashing during shutdown after you ask it to restart, which is possible -- if that were the case though, then you would see a variant boot screen where it would offer to start up in safe mode, or normally, or some other options, rather than getting black screen - unless of course your black screen is hiding that menu, which *can* happen.

I can think of a few other possibilities --

There may be a hard drive error, so that the restart data is corrupted on the drive, and Windows fails to load properly in that scenario ; if this is a desktop rig, you can try changing your IDE ribbon or SATA connector cable.

Another point is that upgrading from XP to Vista is not really recommendable, because some software for XP is not 100% fully compatible with Vista, even in cases where the software may basically work ; you can try running msconfig, then in the Startup tab, uncheck anything that is not absolutely necessary to have running on your computer. If this appears to fix your restart problem, then you should be able to use a little amateur detective work to find which software causes the trouble, by reactivating them in startup one by one.

The issue may be caused by actual hardware damage ; hopefully not, because if so, it will be difficult to guess which component might be damaged.

This could be a drivers issue, either hardware or software drivers, although frankly I'd doubt it ; but sometimes weird things can happen with imperfect drivers.

It may just be a Vista setup issue, and believe me -- Vista can *very* easily have setup problems, as it's by far the most difficult version of Windows to install correctly.

Just a longshot, but given that this sounds like a XP era machine that you've upgraded -- there are some old ATI graphics cards which can cause blackscreen issues during boot, such as the Radeon 9250 and similar ; if you have one of those cards, then you will either have to put up with the behaviour, or change the card.

The trouble I'm having here, to be honest, is that I'm not absolutely certain about the precise differences in Windows behaviour between rebooting and booting from power down -- although some data will remain in cache and likely in RAM during rebooting, and this data will be the cause of your black screen, whether the blackscreen is a pure software issue or if it is caused by hardware or hardware configuration issues.

In your shoes, I'd look at the cheapest theories first -- check to see if any drivers update or changing programs launched at startup in msconfig can help or not ; try and ensure that you have no Vista-incompatible software installed ; check your cable connections, and if possible change the cables ; see if a clean install of Vista helps or not (this will be time consuming, but time would be the only expense) (clean install rather than upgrade btw, because if the problem lies in the registry, upgrade will not fix it) ; and if the problem still persists, then you can start worrying about actual hardware failures, whether hard drive or GPU.

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It is very difficult to pinpoint the problem in cases such as yours -- but I think we can be pretty sure that whatever it is, it is highly unlikely that it it's a problem with your booting configuration as such.

[yeshuas]

I was told by several people it is my BIOS or Boot files. Vista is different than XP...vista has bootmgr and XP has boot.ini so it overrides Vista. All I know is it deals with my bios or boot files.

Let me see if maybe I misunderstood something that you said or are saying.

You had XP on your computer, and then you got and did an upgrade install of Vista, which would do away with XP and the boot.ini file since Vista doesn't use it. (Well actually boot.ini and many other files, may be stored in a folder called Windows.old in case you want to revert back to XP, none the less it takes boot.ini out of the equation)

Am I correct in my assumption so far, you did a upgrade install of Vista?

If what you did was an upgrade it is more likely that you have a hardware issue, e.g. a incorrect driver, one that the upgrade process missed or a program that isn't quite configured correctly again from the upgrade process. Thus it is always better to do a delete, format, and a clean install of an Operating System when ever possible.

What you said about boot.ini overriding Vista's bootmgr just isn't likely, unless you tried to keep XP and install Vista onto another HD or partition of the same HD as XP, in which case Vista would have recognized the Legasy OS and created an entry for it in the bootmgr and the bios causing the issue you are experiencing isn't a viable explanation in your case either

[yeshuas]

Hey Julian, good to see you, I was just posting some similar thoughts, Great minds think alike