Very Slow Repair Install from DVD

I'm experiencing a weird issue on doing a repair install on a late model (last year) Thinkpad T60p laptop (has plenty of horsepower
to run Vista, in fact, it was doing great before I got an unmountable boot disk error).

The installation process is v e r y s l o w. As in, at least 10 minutes to even get to the "pick your language" screen. And
another 10 minutes to give me the chance to pick which OS install to repair...at which point it displays no choices, which either
means I need special drivers for the hard disk (unlikely, it's a plain vanilla SATA) or something is seriously wrong.

I'm running an experiment now with the laptop's SATA drive reconfigured to run in compatbility mode, rather than AHCI mode, because
I seem to recall reading somewhere that AHCI can cause odd problems during installation.

Has anyone else run into this problem? Or have any thoughts on how I can solve this? Could it be a DVD media problem? The disks were
issued by Microsoft under its MSDN program.

- Mark

Mark Olbert wrote:

> I'm experiencing a weird issue on doing a repair install on a late model
> (last year) Thinkpad T60p laptop (has plenty of horsepower to run Vista,
> in fact, it was doing great before I got an unmountable boot disk error).
>
> The installation process is v e r y s l o w. As in, at least 10
> minutes to even get to the "pick your language" screen. And another 10
> minutes to give me the chance to pick which OS install to repair...at
> which point it displays no choices, which either means I need special
> drivers for the hard disk (unlikely, it's a plain vanilla SATA) or
> something is seriously wrong.
>
> I'm running an experiment now with the laptop's SATA drive reconfigured to
> run in compatbility mode, rather than AHCI mode, because I seem to recall
> reading somewhere that AHCI can cause odd problems during installation.
>
> Has anyone else run into this problem? Or have any thoughts on how I can
> solve this? Could it be a DVD media problem? The disks were issued by
> Microsoft under its MSDN program.

It does sound like a hardware problem, but not the install disks. The first
thing I'd test is your hard drive, with other hardware components
afterwards. Since you have a Thinkpad, you really should call Lenovo tech
support.

You can easily test the install disk by putting it in another machine. You
can do this without installing Vista!

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
FAQ - http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ

Thanks. It turns out the problem was running the hard disk in AHCI mode. Reverting to compatibility mode let the repair function
identify the OS partition.

Of course, while the repair option let me reboot into Vista it didn't solve the problem. And it turns out Microsoft, in another fit
of wonderful tweaking, opted to get rid of the "repair reinstall" option for Vista. Sometimes I think they need to find real work
for a lot of people in Redmond, so they'll stop mucking around with stuff that ain't broken .

- Mark

Actually you can perform a "repair reinstall" by simply performing an upgrade install.

Doing so will migrate everything over just like a repair install would and all you should have to do at that point is delete the old unused directories (if any) that are left behind.
"Mark Olbert" <ChairmanMAO@newsgroups.nospam> wrote in message news:98cc74p7jm5h2g5gja0id75pe0c74s0f3h@4ax.com...
Thanks. It turns out the problem was running the hard disk in AHCI mode. Reverting to compatibility mode let the repair function
identify the OS partition.

Of course, while the repair option let me reboot into Vista it didn't solve the problem. And it turns out Microsoft, in another fit
of wonderful tweaking, opted to get rid of the "repair reinstall" option for Vista. Sometimes I think they need to find real work
for a lot of people in Redmond, so they'll stop mucking around with stuff that ain't broken .

- Mark

"Shane Nokes" <shane@hotwiredpc.nospam.cXoXm> wrote in message
news:3211512F-BF41-464C-AC12-E29A0562036C@microsoft.com...
Actually you can perform a "repair reinstall" by simply performing an
upgrade install.


The principal difference from XP's repair install is that an
in-place-upgrade must be run from within Windows. It is no help with an
inoperable system. Mark is right that not having a repair install option is
not helpful.

Thanks, Colin, I couldn't have put it better myself.