New
#1
All fixed now but I had big problems reverting from W10
This is just for information really... I don't know why or what the reasons for this happening were but all is well now.
For some unknown reason I was unable to restore a working Acronis image (of Vista) back onto the C partition used by W10.
(I'll no doubt be back to W10 shortly, just needed some things on the old installation)
For anyone interested here are the gory details,
1/ Pre W10 I made a final Acronis Vista image of the C partition.
2/ W10 installed onto unallocated HDD after first deleting all the partitions.
3/ Decide to pop the Vista image back for a while. To do this I had to use the bootable Acronis disc... something I've done a few times in the past. This restore would only overwrite the W10 C drive and leave the small 350mb system partition that W10 created. Is that a problem ?
4/ The restart to Vista brings up the W10 logo and a "repairing your PC" message. Hmmm. So that must be from the small system partition I assume. It asks for a restart and then boots into the familiar Vista welcome screen but instead of going to the desktop it goes to the Vista "preparing your desktop" screen. Something you only see on initial install. And its stuck... non responsive. Fortunately the power button works as normal (in fact task manager could be opened and shows Vista as running)
5/ I reboot and its the same, stuck on preparing desktop.
6/ I popped a Vista disk in and did a "repair your PC" in the hope that something would be fixed. It said the PC was unable to start (but it could) and that repairs were not possible. I also then had a blue screen with an error box about a rundll32 error. Power down. Next :)
7/ I quickly reinstall Vista from scratch just to get a copy on the PC. No problems there. Install Acronis and running Acronis from within Vista (which is how I normally do things) I restore the same image again.
8/ This time its perfect... and what a treat on the eyes.
As I say, I'll be back shortly no doubt (I imaged W10 just before I left it... that's going to be fun... nah... I made a full disk image of that, all partitions and sector by sector so it should be a breeze)