System Restore Crash Help?

January 19, 2012 1:44:06 PM

My cable modem stopped working yesterday. My wife was home and called our ISP who ran through a few diagnostics and eventually said it looks like you have a bad modem. So last night I bought a new one and hooked everything up and it wasn't working. I called the ISP and gave them the information they needed to register the modem on their end. It still wasn't working even with the laptop plugged directly to the modem. So I tried my laptop with the same result. The ISP CSR was baffled and said he would call back in 10mins. 11+ hours later and no call. Not surprised but still...
So I ran through a windows diganostic on my laptop. It said do a hard boot on the modem which I did and it worked for my laptop. My wifes laptop still wouldn't connect. I thought maybe the ISP did something to the laptop during the time my wife was one the phone with them. I went to System Restore and saw that there was a point at 3:45pm that yesterday. I thought if it only resets the system files I shouldn't have to worry too much about the pics, music, etc on there. I confess I had not done a backup recently. That's my own stupid fault. Anyway, I had System Restore restore to the point made earlier in the day (after a Windows update I believe). That was last night at about midnight. This morning it was still on the screen which reads "Please wait while your windows file and settings are being restored. System Restore is initializing..."
It seems to have crashed there. I'm not sure why and I'm not sure how to fix it without completely corrupting my hdd. I'm worried that if I turn it off, it wither won't work or it will take a complete recovery from the recovery partition it came with. This is an hp laptop that we bought in August 2009. They would not provide the media for Win 7 but did provide a recovery partition.
So what can I do to maintain my data and get the laptop at least running again? I'll tackle the LAN/WAN connection issue later. Please feel free to ask questions.
Thanks

More about : system restore crash

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Hawkeye22

Laptop Expert

Windows 7 Authority

January 19, 2012 1:56:39 PM

Unfortunately there may not be much you can do. Even if you don't shut down the computer, your only option is to kill the system restore process. On the plus side, if it's stuck at initializing, it may not have started the restore process yet which means your computer should be as it was before you started the system restore.

I know you said HP didn't give you media, but there is normally an option or program provided that will create installation media for you. I've done this on my HP desktop. It only allows you to create one set of media.

To kill the process, hit CTRL-ALT-DEL then select "task manager". If you find system restore on the applications tab, you can highlight it, then click "end task". if it's not listed there, check the processes tab, select the system restore then click "end process".

If you are concerned about this, you can continue to wait for more replies.

As for your wife's laptop and networking, make sure to reboot the computer after you have plugged it into the modem. This will make sure it pulls an IP address from the modem.

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jdenova007

January 19, 2012 2:20:30 PM

System restores can take a while, depending on your data.... but I can't help with your "restore" issue....

but if you are JUST using a Modem you will only be allowed to use one PC at a time. If you use a router, mulitple connections can happen. But a modem is "attached" to one Mac Address at a time... so when you did the reset on the modem your PC worked because it "attached" to your PC's Mac address. But when you tried your wife's PC it wouldn't allow you to connect because your wife's Mac address is different from your PC's Mac address. If you did another reset and connect your wife's PC first, it would work fine...

Mac addresses are different for each machine and cannot be changed(unless you change the motherboard/NIC card). So, you shouldn't have messed with your PC... sorry. Get a router and you'll be all set... at least with getting things connected. Good luck with the restore process.

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BlueFireAngel

January 19, 2012 5:10:34 PM

Hawkeye22 said:

Unfortunately there may not be much you can do. Even if you don't shut down the computer, your only option is to kill the system restore process. On the plus side, if it's stuck at initializing, it may not have started the restore process yet which means your computer should be as it was before you started the system restore.

I know you said HP didn't give you media, but there is normally an option or program provided that will create installation media for you. I've done this on my HP desktop. It only allows you to create one set of media.

I'm hoping you're right about it being stuck on initializing. If it is actually working on the restore process and I kill it, what will happen to the computer? Will it revert to it was before or will it corrupt everything on the hdd?

Also, do you know what that program is called to create the installation media?

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BlueFireAngel

January 19, 2012 5:19:31 PM

jdenova007 said:

System restores can take a while, depending on your data.... but I can't help with your "restore" issue....

but if you are JUST using a Modem you will only be allowed to use one PC at a time. If you use a router, mulitple connections can happen. But a modem is "attached" to one Mac Address at a time... so when you did the reset on the modem your PC worked because it "attached" to your PC's Mac address. But when you tried your wife's PC it wouldn't allow you to connect because your wife's Mac address is different from your PC's Mac address. If you did another reset and connect your wife's PC first, it would work fine...

Mac addresses are different for each machine and cannot be changed(unless you change the motherboard/NIC card). So, you shouldn't have messed with your PC... sorry. Get a router and you'll be all set... at least with getting things connected. Good luck with the restore process.

I have a router (actually two). They are fine. I did try to restart the modem and use my wife's computer first. It was still the same result. I think though that I'll give it another shot, if I can get the computer back from the restore problem. Once that's figured out, I'm worried that her ethernet port is fried. If it is I'm not sure how because this is probably the only time she's ever used it. Normally, we run wireless. So if it's fried it's not the end of the world but it's disturbing because I don't know how it happened or how to prevent it from happening to another computer or something similar happening to a different component.

Thanks to both of you!

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jdenova007

January 19, 2012 5:29:42 PM

lol.. ok, figured you had a router. I imagine then, you are connecting to the Router... NOT the modem? Have you reset the router?

NIC could have been bad since you purchased the laptop, just never tested it. Nothing typically "fries" them except something internally on the motherboard. Hopefully it ONLY affects the NIC.

Did you go into her BIOS and enable the NIC??? If its shut off in the BIOS it doesn't matter what you do to windows, it won't work until you enable it in the BIOS. Check that.

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BlueFireAngel

January 27, 2012 2:24:37 AM

Since it was just initializing when I turned it off everything came back up as before. So I was able save everything. Eventually we reset the computer to factory settings and that seems to have everything working again. It seems that the NIC and wireless cards got messed up. Fortunately it was a software issue not a hardware issue.
Thanks for all of the advice.

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BlueFireAngel

January 27, 2012 2:25:35 AM

Best answer selected by BlueFireAngel.

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nikorr

Laptop Expert

Windows 7 Authority

January 27, 2012 3:23:15 AM

This topic has been closed by Nikorr

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