Vista update woes

[MobileTechie]

Got an HP laptop in which was dropped and wouldn't start. I replaced the HDD and cloned the system and had to manuall restore the registry to get it booting, which is does and works fine. However the first problem was that I couldn't install a new AV app due to "missing components" so I tried to update it to SP2 - wouldn't install either (vista sp2 ERROR_SHARING_VIOLATION (0x80070020)

So tried an inplace upgrade but upgrade option is greyed out. If I allow it to do it's updates it installs about 50 and then won't boot giving an 0x000000f (boot media not available). If then boot into recovery mode, bootrec doesn't find an OS entry. If I use system restore to go back to before the updates then it finds the boot media just fine and we're back to square one - cannot install SP2, cannot do an inplace upgrade install, cannot allow it to do updates.

I've tried the update readiness tool. I looked for the vlite key which can be a fix but it doesn't exist so cannot delete that. I tried do a very restricted startup eliminating all non MS services and start up apps. Still get the "reverting changes" message after the service pack fails to install.

 

[srdrgz11]

Have you ran sfc /scannow?

When you said you tried an inplace upgrade, does that mean you tried the upgrade from inside windows or booting from a dvd? What type of vista dvd are you using, oem or retail, with or without service packs installed?

I believe you need a retail vista dvd with no service packs installed and do the upgrade from inside windows not booting from the dvd, in order for the upgrade option to be available and not grayed out.

I have done this a few times for machines that would not update and more recently for a pc that had chkdsk issues. This worked each time.

Here is the link for the upgrade/ repair install for vista http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/88236-repair-install-vista.html

 

[MobileTechie]

Turns out I needed the Vista disk to have a higher SP than the existing intallation. I got an SP2 disk and this did the inplace upgrade which solved everything. Cheers anyway.