Vista loop of death... stumped!

My HP Pavillion was fine until one day I saw the blue screen of death when trying to boot. The black boot up screens had a messed up sort of tiled blue pixel background, making me think there was an issue with the graphics drivers. Running safe mode worked fine, and the screensaver showed the message "cannot display graphics as there is a video issue" or similar... so today I tried to fix it. I backed up all of my important files and ran the recovery wizard by hitting F11 upon boot, with the intention of starting fresh with Vista.

I followed the wizard's steps and chose not to make a system snapshot/back up, as had saved everything I wanted and feared making another back up on the same HDD may mess things up.

When it had finished it said "now loading Vista for the first time", though the messed up blue pixel background was still showing on top of the black background. After a few minutes, I got the BSOD again, and back in the restart loop.

Going into safe mode now gives me the message "start Windows normally so that Vista can finish installing", and then it restarts, and of course starting Windows normally results in the BSOD.

I've tried a couple of memory/disk tests in the BIOS screen but nothing worked. Annoyingly, if I had chosen to make a snapshot back up I could probably at least go back into safe mode.

I'm totally stumped on what to do here. I do have a way of using the command prompt if that would help at all. I've read up on things like re-seating the BIOS battery, or typing a particular code into DOS to reset the BIOS, but am a little worried that's going to make matters even worse.

Would anyone have any suggestions? I'd really appreciate them. Thank you.

 

1. Run windows in safe mode
2. Uninstall your video drivers and PhysX
3. Run DriverSweeper to clean up and files that might get left behind (display driver and Physx)
4. Reboot and make sure everything is ok
5. Install stable drivers and cross your fingers.

 

Thank you for your suggestion. But...

I'm completely locked out unfortunately.

 

Your errors all sound like they're with Vista's install, not with the BIOS, so perhaps you can get to a recovery console booting off of your restore discs, and use that to format c:, and then re-run the recovery?

At worst case, you'll have to see if you can find a Vista OEM install disc and just reinstall it from scratch instead of trying to use the restore discs.

 

Unforunately there's no restore discs - I'm doing this on behalf of a friend and he didn't create any. Perhaps there's some utility I can burn to disc and run from DOS that would reformat C:?

Being a HP laptop no Vista disc was bundled, though wouldn't installing Vista from an original disc have the same effect as installing it from the recovery partition? The install from recovery partition works successfully but the final step after it restarts can't be completed as the BSOD interrupts it.

Thanks for your help thus far.

 

I'ma gonna guess that this laptop is about 2.5-3 years old and it's graphics card is made my nvidia?
If so then it's shot with the Nvidia Defect,good luck getting HP to help.

 

I couldnt find a model number (in hindsight it's probably on a sticker on the base) - it's a large-sized laptop with the mouse buttons/touch pad offset to the left and it says "HP Pavillion Entertainment PC" below the keys. He bought it about a year ago I think... it probably has a nVidia card.

I've done some Googling on what you've said Sonicjet, and found these answers...

"Call HP They Have A Recall As The Onboard Video Cards Are Faulty Even After 2 Years They Replace The Whole Motherboard..."

"Your computer will die shortly when thae Nvidia chip fries. The update willget you through till the warranty expires and then HP will tell you to take a hike."

"There was a small, soft buffer to keep these two parts separate, and if that got compressed, the short would happen. Now here's the weird thing. The grounding plate that creates the short is INTENTIONALLY there. It seems to have no other purpose than to be in close proximity to the charged circuit board. If you wanted to design something that would go out in a few years of use (but beyond the warranty policy), this would be a good way to design it!"

This is abysmal. I've always sworn by my trusty VAIO (although it has a nVidia card and has been fine for 3 years?) and tend to hear bad things about HP, but wow. And there's even a site, www.HPlies.com, dedicated to this 'nVidia defect'. Thank you for your help on this... this sucks