unbootable after installing Vista SP1 on X61T

[xja]

I updated all my Lenovo drivers, including the latest Intel Turbo Memory driver, then tried to install SP1 on my X61T. After the "first stage" of SP1 install and the following reboot, boot process hangs on the "(C) Microsoft Corporation" with the "progress" bar continually scrolling, but no hard drive activity. Never gets past that screen. Tried to start up in Safe Mode, it loads all drivers through crcdisk.sys then just hangs there.

Tried to do a system restore using Vista DVD and restoring the restore point from just before SP1 install. It runs through the whole process seemingly successfully and then hangs on "Finalizing file restore..." I've left it that point for hours overnight but it never gets past that point, and when restarting, it's the same situation (actually now it freezes at the (C) Microsoft Corporation screen with the screen not fully faded in and no progress bar movement).

Any ideas where this went wrong and how to fix it?

[Brad]

Welcome to the forum!

Sorry to hear of your trouble. I haven't heard that this is a common problem.

What I would do is recover the system with the recovery partition. Try pressing F11 at startup.

Hopefully you have a backup. If not I would remove the drive and install it in a USB external enclosure and connect to another computer to retrieve your data.

Not an ideal solution but a solution nonetheless.

Brad

[adrianaitken]

In the BIOS you can set the SATA harddrive to 'compatibility mode' rather than ACPI (?) mode. I'd try that.

[xja]

In the BIOS you can set the SATA harddrive to 'compatibility mode' rather than ACPI (?) mode. I'd try that.

You are the man! Thanks so much. I did this, rebooted, and it proceeded to completion with the SP1 installation (apparently, it had incurred the problem after stage 2, not stage 1, of the SP1 installation, as it resumed with stage 3).

Do you know why this causes a problem? Is it best to leave it in compatibility mode going forward or should I switch back to ACPI ... would that cause the problem to reappear and if not, is there any benefit of having it in ACPI mode in the first place? Does it impact sleep/hibernate?

Again, many thanks!

[xja]

correction for the record for those referring to this: the BIOS setting for SATA that is referred to above is "AHCI" and not "ACPI".

[crashnburn]

Interesting.

[xja]

one side effect is that the Intel Turbo Memory will not work, although some might consider that a positive rather than a negative. I'm unable to switch back to AHCI mode, as it will not boot in that mode. I'm not about to reinstall Vista, which as I understand it, is what is necessary to be able to switch to AHCI (I question whether that would even work anyway).

[ryengineer]

snip.......I'm not about to reinstall Vista, which as I understand it, is what is necessary to be able to switch to AHCI (I question whether that would even work anyway).

You can do so without reinstalling Windows:

AHCI mode.

[xja]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I was able to re-enable AHCI, although a little differently that in the post linked to above, and more closely to the follow up post in that thread (and to the procedure described in the Intel Matrix Storage Manager instructions regarding installing in XP when you don't have a floppy disk). For others' reference, this is what I did:

1. Download and run Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver to extract it to C:\DRIVERS\WIN\IMSM

2. Went into C:\DRIVERS\WIN\IMSM\PREPARE\ and ran install.cmd.

3. Restarted holding F1 to get into BIOS settings, changed SATA to AHCI. Saved and restarted.

Vista then started up properly. In my case, I had to go into Intel Turbo Memory Console and Enable ReadyBoost and reboot.

[arachno]

In the BIOS you can set the SATA harddrive to 'compatibility mode' rather than ACPI (?) mode. I'd try that.

You're great!
I have not IBM laptop (Acer Aspire 5920) but your solution helps me in same case. Once again - thank you!