Vista Reinstallation

My main computer broke down last night. When I came home at around 9:15pm, shaked the mouse, monitor lit up, showing a frozen screen with time at 8:30pm. I have no clue what happened, judging from a popup from system tray, looks like lightscribe was updating, but perhaps it was just notifying new updates, can't remember.

Major reinstalling today. Faulty (scratches) Vista DVD disc caused my time. Having a recently bought external slim dvd burner helped me create a new Vista DVD, somewhat different "version" than the last one (No repair option during disc boot). But this new one looks a lot better (no need to install any on board drivers manually, no monitor flickering problem, no audio problem-Just needed to set max level and boost in the microphone properties for better sound recording).

Steps:

Restart frozen computer, boot into a screen saying "windows could not update the computer's boot configuration"..."status: 0xc0000001".

Had to fix the mbr. I could still use the faulty Vista disc to start the startup repair and thus go to command prompt. Used bootrec.exe /FixMbr, bootrec.exe /FixBoot to cleanup the corrupted MBR. (There are two other commands that follow based on my research: Bootrec.exe and /ScanOsBootrec.exe /RebuildBcd, but I don't think they did anything useful).

Switched to the new Vista (32bit, the previous one was 64bit I think) disc for installation. Installing without deleting previous system, old documents saved automatically in windows.old.

Desktop icon size changed smaller via right click on desktop->view->classic icons.

Used bcdedit in command prompt to delete some unwanted Vista system I attempted on another partition (optional)

Installed all major softwares, office, antivir, canon MF printer, webcam, etc.

Couldn't remove old windows.old.xxx folders, message "You need permission to perform this action" while attempting delete. So set ownership to current user, replacing subcontainer, same thing in advanced permission on all inheritable ones.

!!! Changing the system locale language to Chinese however, made the restart display a failure message and cannot boot into windows. Solution: Choose to Boot from Last Known Configuration Mode. (Or use the Vista DVD version that has repair feature when that fails)

Dec 02 2010
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The post-installation was very satisfactory until I had to install Asian languages with their MUI packs. I tried SP1 version of the MUI language packs, I even tried Vlite to modify a integrated version of the DVD disc, all failed. I gather that this new version I've gotten has been modified so much that it can't be helped anymore.

I was preparing for windows 7 already. However, I am still very aquainted with Vista, so I got myself another version of Vista Ultimate unmodified, thanks to TPB. This could be the same one as my previous disc.

Dec 03 2010 12:45 AM
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My computer is finally back. All files restored, save a few programs such as CS suite, bullzip, lightscribe, etc.

Nvidia graphic driver updated to deal with Stellarium's smoothness.

Conclusion:

I supposed the cause of this whole mess was something messed up the boot sector MBR.