dietche wrote:
....
We reboot into the Recovery Tool CD. It starts loading, asks us about wanting English, she clicks ok.
It asks us for a key, and on that same panel, it has an EULA and a box to click that we agree to it, and an ok button.
She types in the cdkey, very carefully, and I'm listening to her on the phone, matching the key to her typing. As soon as she types the last character of the cdkey into the 5 boxes it flipping reboots. It doesn't even wait for her to click the EULA check box or hit ok or anything, it just flipping reboots.
I think, ok, fine, maybe the program is burning something back to the disk and it'll reboot and update and scan now.... except, nope.
It reboots, goes back into the Recovery CD, autoaccepts English, flashes "updating program" for just a **bleep** quick second, and puts the same window up again asking for the key and the EULA. We take a moment to roll our eyes. She begins typing the key in again, and before she even gets half way done typing the key in, it reboots *again*. Just, poof.
So, I'm like done. I'm just gonna fly out there and beat this thing into submission. Thanks again fer all yer help gang.
--Disgruntled Dietche
D, something is wrong here. It doesn't match expected behavior. I've tested this on a dozen machines (and on our own 3 machines frequently). If the Key is wrong, the screen stays the same and tells you the key is wrong. If the key is right, it updates the sigs into RAM meanwhile giving you a screen showing that it is about to scan and waiting for you to hit "okay" or "start."
So why the rebooting?
Possibility 1: The CD was misburned. Most of the coding is on there, but something vital is missing; and when it hits that spot, it crashes and the system reboots. Try burning another CD. Remember you can't use a Read-write CD. It has to be a read-CD. Make your mom wait until the CD ejects on its own.
Possibility 2: The download of the original image terminated incorrectly and either the end-of-file didn't make it or a huge clump of terminal code was missing. So the CD was misburned.
I know this sounds absurd, but I have recently downloaded a surprisingly number of incomplete files using three different download managers. These were files from Symantec, Secunia, DVDCloner, and another site that escapes my memory at the moment. One of these wouldn't launch. One launched, but stopped in the middle and shut down. One launched, started, then said it couldn't continue and shut itself down politely. In each case, I returned to the download site and tried again and again. With Symantec, it took three times. With Secunia, it took six. With DVDCloner I had to find a different mirror site. If this were only my computer, I would assume it had something to do with my machine. But I've experienced this now on four or five different machines. If this were only on machines with NIS 2009, I would blame that product; but one of the machines didn't even have a Norton product on it.
I don't know what is going on. It could be an inherent flaw in recent Windows updates, but I've experience it both on XP and Vista machines. It could have something to do with Network traffic. It could be ... what.
But it is happening. And unlike what I would expect, the corrupt downloads do not all crash immediately; instead most proceed into the program some distance or another.
If this happened here, you will need to download another image.
Possibility 3. Something wrong with the BIOS or with the RAM. These are the only parts of your computer that the CD addresses (to the best of my knowledge).
I don't know the solution here.
Possibility 4. A virus on the computer that burned the CD and which itself corrupted the CD.
Solution: Use another machine; or burn it on your machine and test it on your machine first, then send it second-day UPS (about $10 and cheaper than a plane ticket).
Edited for Possibility 5: The machine is an older one that doesn't have the capability of or appropriate drivers for accessing the internet from power-on state and the program is crashing during its attempt to update the virus signatures. This should be unlikely because the disk contains the basic drivers that should work. Your mother's machine isn't dial-up, is it? I don't remember.
That's all my mind comes up with this late at night. I'll sleep on it and see what else occurs to me. In the mean time, good luck.
Message Edited by mijcar on 11-25-2008 09:06 PM
mij
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