IQ770 System Recovery Fails at 'Completing Installation.'

[Jim_Tennet]

Hi Folks,

Perhaps someone out there could shed some light on this problem. I have a ticket open with HP (I purchased a one time support contract) but I'm not convinced that the guy assigned to me is going to fix the problem. Copied below is a transcript of my emails so far. I'm getting close to the end of my tether - surely someone has seen this before. This was an expensive piece of kit 3 years ago and is now little more that a pet rock. XP loads up beautifully which would be fine apart from the fact that HP do not supply drivers other than for Vista.

If somebody could help, I would be forever in their debt. It is, without doubt, a badly handled Microsoft installation but I would have thought that a recovery DVD supplied by HP should have completed cleanly. Perhaps I'm just being naive.

Dear Glenn,

Thank you for getting back to me but it looks like you have misunderstood the situation. Let me reiterate what is going on.

1: This IQ770 suffered data corruption after an unscheduled power down and thereafter failed to boot either normally, in safe mode or after restoring to a previously good date.. I recovered the essential data by removing the hard drive (a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 320 GBytes drive) and attaching it to another machine. I then replaced the drive and attempted System recovery to factory condition via F11 at startup and using the recovery partition. This started OK but never finished.

I then attempted to use the supplied Recovery DVD. This is a totally automated activity after the first couple of on screen questions. After booting the DVD and choosing recovery without first backing up data (this has already been done) the system then proceeds re-format the C drive and to copy the contents of the DVD. On completion, the DVD is ejected and a 'Recovery Complete' message is displayed. On clicking 'Finish' the system re-boots and the first stage of the build begins (FlexBuild 2.0) with lots of file copying. When this is complete, the system re-boots again and the message 'please wait a moment while windows prepares to start for the first time' is displayed. This is followed by a new screen with several tick boxes filled in:
Copying Windows files
Expanding files
Installing features
Installing updates
Completing installation ...
The last one being still in progress. This continues for a short while with much disk activity and then hangs. This step never completes. It can be left for hours on end but the procedure never continues any further.

After forcing a reboot, windows begins to start but then a message is displayed saying, "The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. to install Windows, click 'OK' to restart the computer and then restart the installation." This message is, of course, quite understandable as the installation was interrupted.

At no time has this booted to Windows. Consequently I cannot follow your instructions. However, I have told you what kind of drive is installed (above).

Below is a link to a google search that hi lights many similar occurrences with other systems.

http://tinyurl.com/y6v2ckn

2: Sorry, wrong drive type in last message - it is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10

3: In addition to theabove, I have successfully, temporarily, installed a copy of Windows XP (using a spare hard drive of a similar type (but 7200.11) so as to preserve the partitioning of the original) and the disk name in device manager is ST3320613AS. Of course, this is not a satisfactory solution as HP do not supply drivers for XP and I have no applications installed. I could install Windows 7 (I have several copies) but again HP do not supply drivers.

4: *** STOP PRESS ***
Having a copy of Vista Ultimate here I thought I'd try and upgrade the XP system that I had successfully installed. It failed at exactly the same point.

5: While waiting, I tried Windows 7 also. Hangs in exactly the same place.

[easyskanker]

Hi

I cant help you with your vista/windows7 installation problems but I used these XP drivers for my IQ772 and they worked without a hitch.

http://hotfile.com/dl/38686167/a85b65c/XP_Driver_Backup1.rar.html

thanks must go to Peckish from another forum for these drivers (except for the bluetooth and webcam)

I know this is not the solution to your problem but if all else fails at least you'll have a working o.s

Here are the specs for the IQ772: 

http://gdgt.com/hp/touchsmart/iq772/specs/

And here are the specs for the IQ770:

http://gdgt.com/hp/touchsmart/iq770/specs/

they are pretty similar...you should'nt have much trouble installing these drivers.I hope you find a solution to your real problem though and if not you might find these useful.

[Jim_Tennet]

Thanks easyskanker,

I'll download those and give it a try.

Not the total answer but if I can get something up and running it might be of some use to somebody.

I've given up on HP tech support. All they could tell me to do was to try the recovery again following al the instructions that I had already done a dozen times. After it hung for the last time, all they could tell me was to take it to a nearby HP service centre. Is there such a thing? In all, I paid my £20 expecting to be put in touch with some body with some real technical knowledge specific to these machines. What happened in reality was that I was told nothing that I didn't already know. The very polite gentleman that I dealt with was obviously working from a script and when he fell out at the bottom then ........... need I say more. I really should know better by now.

Thanks again,

Jim

[Nyati-Tech]

Hi,

I had the same problem the recovery went as far as "RECOVERY COMPLETED" and then the PC just hang. After 7 unsuccessful attemps, I finally disconneted my USB keyboard and the recovery was successful. Since this is a Touchscreen PC you don't really need a mouse or keyboard to do the recovery. Just to be safe I'd also take out the batteries from any wireless Keyboard before proceeding with the recovery. Hope this helps.

Nyati-Tech

[jrgirl151]

I ordered the recovery disk and got them in the mail today. followed the instructions to the letter and after the system rebots itself and is configuring windows it stops with same error message :

windows cannot finish installing there was an unexpected error .....press ok to restart installaion.

i have restarted the computer with the recovery disk and followed the instructions 5 times now and keep getting the same message. I am really upset cause I just sold that computer and was just trying to restore to origional os and clean all my info off the computer there was nothing wrong with it untill i bought the recovery disk and used them.

PLEASE HELP!!!!

[jrgirl151]

jim you should check my other posts. i refused to pay for their tech support and finally got a corprate number after 5 hours of being transfered to india and back to a dead end line that no one ansered. I got a new disk here is the number of the corprate tech support guy that sent my new disk.

 Corprate Tech Support Case Managers line if they wont help you ask to be trasfered to ext.13 650-857-1501

Maybe if we complain to corprate enough we will get some results!

Also make sure to keep your laptop proped up so it dosent overheat while useing the new disks!

[Hiddenvision]

It could be a memory module error/failure.

Remove one stick and see what happens during install.

Switch them over if it still fails on first stick.

Or it could be a bad sector on the harddrive, but I think you said you tried another..

The failed install should have created enough log files to see exactly at what stage it failed,

compared to a log of a good install you should also be able to narrow down the cause.

Hv.