thenothing

I need some help. I've found similar situations in different forums for solutions but none seem to do any good for me.

When I initially set up my PC, I partitioned off 20 GB of my 320 GB hard drive to install a dual-boot for Vista, while still keeping XP as my more commonly used OS. Recently, I made the decision to switch to using Vista more often. I needed more space for that partition, there was only about 3 gigs left of that 20. So I took another 40 GB off of my XP drive, and merged it to my Vista partition. Everything seemed fine, but then I went to log in to Vista, and as soon as I sign in to Windows, instead of the normal appearance of the desktop, I get a blue screen (not the blue screen of death, just like a normal blue desktop, except with no taskbar) and the message:

"Rundll32.exe"
"Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access them."

But it also says this for every other program or windows component. I can get explorer and the taskbar to come up if I run it from the task manager, but nothing works. No admin tools or control panel options, nothing. Just task manager and I can hit CTR-ALT-DEL and get all my shutdown options. When I try to take back permissions or claim ownership over them, I get:

"Device is not ready"

Is this fixable? I've tried everything I can think of. I did a full DSKCHK, I tried repairing the OS with the install disk. I'm running out of options and I'd really rather not have to set up Vista from scratch again.

Lead3

When you run explorer from the Task manager, what is the drive letter assigned to Vista?
It should be C: If is is not, (remember what it is) you need to boot in safe mode and probably from the task manager run Regedit. Then go to HKEY_Local_machine/System/Mounted devices. Here you will see a list of the drives and the letters assigned. Whatever explorer said was the VISTA drive needs to be renamed C:. First find what is named C: and rename it to a unused letter then rename the Vista drive to C: Then reboot.
Note only do these if the Vista drive shown by explorer is not C:

__________________

Lead3

I was in a bit of a rush before. What you need to rename is \DosDevices\(drive letter).

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thenothing

Okay, so.. tried your advice and it didn't work either. Going with my gut and advice from two IT team members from work, I decided to reinstall. But therein lies a whole new problem that I spent all last night trying to fix.

- I formatted the partition.
- I reinstalled Vista successfully.
- It auto installed all the critical updates and restarted.
- I did a follow-up update search, which turns up 4 Ultimate extras, one additional Windows Vista update, an update for my video card, and some other junk that I don't need.
- While installing, I get a couple error messages saying that Windows couldn't copy some of the WAV files for the Ultimate extras sound scheme updates.
- It says that it finished, and the system restarts.

Here's the problem now: That first black screen with the green loading bar comes and goes, my screen flickers, and then my screen goes completely blue. BSOD blue. With no error message. My only option at that point is to restart. Upon restarting, it went right into DSKCHK, where it seemed to find a ton of stuff wrong. Of course it didn't help my situation either. I figured it was my video card, that maybe the update of the new drivers for it was making a mess of things, so I formatted and reinstalled Vista completely again, did the auto updates, and then when it came to the additional updates, I left out the video drivers this time.

This didn't help, went right back to the same thing. Blank blue screen before even getting to the log in screen and a DSKCHK full of corrupt files being deleted and whatnot.. any idea what's going on? Everything seems fine until I download the additional updates.

AND I had Vista for over a year without really using it too much, so it's not like my system can't handle it. Thanks so much for replying, if you could help me out with this it would be greatly appreciated.