# Can You Repair VISTA instead of reinstalling?



## TexasBandit (Jul 18, 2006)

My sister is having a problem with VISTA. She has been online with Dell Support, and they informed her that there are corrupt files in VISTA. Restore will not work, and she cannot defrag her drive. Those are the only problems so far, but the concern is the corruption. Is there a way to repair corrupted files in VISTA without a complete reinstall? Since I use XP, I am not very familiar with VISTA so any addtional information will be welcomed.

Thanks ...


----------



## Skifer UK (Dec 21, 2006)

There is one other way that you can repair vista if you still have the installation disk that came with your pc pop it into the CD drive and make sure the boot is set on CD-Rom

Now do what the computer says to get you into the CD it will say press any key to boot from CD-rom or something like that.

After that you should come onto the installation screen pick your keyboard settings etc.. then once you get the the INSTALL NOW button don't click it and on the bottom left of the screen there should be a Repair option click on that and Vista should auto-repair itself

But if that doesn't work your only option is to reformat I'm sorry.


----------



## Monty Python (Nov 2, 2007)

Research "Vista in place upgrade" before doing this. It is NOT intuitive at all.

running sfc /scanow from the run box might fix the problem by re-writing the system files with those from the install disk.


----------



## TexasBandit (Jul 18, 2006)

Thanks for the information folks. It was suggested by the Dell Tech to try "chkdsk /R". We'll try that today. If it doesn't do it, we'll try running "sfc /scannow" using files from the install disk as you suggested Monty Python. Thanks again ...


----------



## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

the workaround is the upgrade install


----------



## TexasBandit (Jul 18, 2006)

Ok, we have contacted "TechSperts" here in town to help with this problem. We had no success with "Chkdsk" or "SFC" processes. The problems seem to be isolated to the "defrag" and "restore" processes at least as far as we know. If we could just replace these processes from the install disk with a "repair", our problem would be solved. However, we can't find a way to do that. So far VISTA has been a royal pain. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to replace the affected modules? We can't even get a boot from the installation CD because we can't find the place to "point" toward that instead of the loaded version. Any suggestions would really be appreciated. HELP!

Thanks


----------



## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

pop in the dvd from within windows and run the upgrade


----------



## TexasBandit (Jul 18, 2006)

I was a little afraid of the "upgrade". Does it do anything to the other software on the PC or does it only affect VISA? We didn't want to affect any of the other software or data on the PC.

Thanks ...


----------



## Jacee (Jan 4, 2008)

This is a great tutorial for "Startup Repair":
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial148.html


----------



## TexasBandit (Jul 18, 2006)

The problem is the VISTA disc that Dell sent does not have that available as a selection. We couldn't even get the thing to boot from the DVD drive. The "TechSperts" folks are working on it and trying to perform an "Update" this afternoon. I have not heard back from them yet however ... sure hope they can fix this mess. Thanks for the reply though ...


----------

