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Windows 8 won't load properly

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TOFF

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Posted December 1, 2012 at 10:59PM

I installed 8 successfully about a month ago and all went well. The only recent change I have made is to install Startmenu8 to get a more normal Windows look. Yesterday my computer screen went dark blue and the mouse seemed not to function. I changed batteries and rebooted. However all I get is my desktop with no task bar and no icons. The programmes show up along the bottom but will not open maximised so I can't use them. I have a Dell desktop and have run the diagnostics on F12 at start up. All is ok according to that. I want to restore to a previous point but cannot get at Windows to do this. Any suggestions gratefully received.

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TOFF

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Posted December 6, 2012 at 8:09AM

Flashfaint Please let me know if you find a solution as i am away at present and cannot try anything myself.

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rdave13

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Posted December 6, 2012 at 11:52AM

If the CD drive doesn't show up in bios do you have anything showing to boot from USB? If so here's a tutorial to create a bootable flash drive with win 8 from an iso file. http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/a/install-windows-8-usb.htm

I'd join the Dell forums about the missing CD drive in bios.

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TOFF

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Posted December 9, 2012 at 4:22PM

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I eventually manged to boot from my CD drive with the recovery disk (W8 version) but it said that both my restore point and image wouldn't work. I therefore tried to do a clean install of W8 but that wouldn't work. It just hung after several hours. I tried the same with W7 but with the same result.

My machine came with Vista so I installed that from the Dell recovery disk. This worked. I then tried to upgrade to W7 SP1 (an upgrade which would never install back in the day) from a CD I downloaded off the Windows website. That went on all night with the machine interminably rebooting. Still hung this morning. So I reinstalled Vista as above (clean) and tried to install W7 from the original upgrade CD. This is hanging also. The reason I haven't gone straight to W8 is that I think I have an image from a few months ago before I upgraded to 8.

Should I be patient and let it carry on even if it is taking a day or more? I have tried to restart and it offers me safe mode but won't let me do it as it is still 'installing'.

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rdave13

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Posted December 9, 2012 at 5:37PM

I'm a bit stumped on this one. Just wondering if the hard drive is ok? You could return to factory settings again and run chkdsk. At least this will show that the drive is not the problem, or otherwise. I would also post your problem on the Dell forums about the upgrading failures. Sorry I can't be of more help.

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TOFF

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Posted December 9, 2012 at 5:54PM

Thanks rdave. I did originally run the full Dell diagnostics and all was said to be Ok. The drive is quite new. I will do as you suggest.

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TOFF

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Posted December 9, 2012 at 7:24PM

I've just started restoring from a reasonably W7 image in Vista. Cross fingers but it seems to be working ok. I did this before when my old HDD died but I was rather hoping that I could ditch the old baggage and do a clean install as I have saved my data files separately. Never mind. I should be able to upgrade to W8 from there. What a waste of time.

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rdave13

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Posted December 9, 2012 at 8:02PM

At least it's working. When you upgrade again to 8 don't carry over any files or folders. I did it that way yet all my favourites were intact in IE 10.

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TOFF

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Posted December 9, 2012 at 8:06PM

How do I do what you suggest?

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rdave13

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Posted December 9, 2012 at 8:15PM

During the Win 8 upgrade install, in the page that asks you what to keep, I selected nothing.

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rdave13

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Posted December 9, 2012 at 8:17PM

Found this, click here, shows the page and explains better that I can. :)

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