Vista SP2 installation fails.

[NeTTy]

Ok against my advice my parents bought a pre built acer desktop about a year ago they had a problem so I went round to sort it out and noticed that windows automatic updates had failed namely SP2.

I've tried everything I can think of to get it to work all to no avail the information I have is that because SP2 has to access the boot files and obviously acer use disk cloning on their systems making the sp installer unable to identify them.

Acer support website has no information or acknowledgement of the issue and for some reason won't accept the legitimate serial number so I can ask a question, obviously they didn't recieve a vista installation disk so a repair/reinstall is impossable.

Longshot but has anyone else come across this and solved itor does anyone have any suggestions as what else I could try?

 

[Fegruson]

ALT + F10 on the first splash screen to start the Acer recovery environment.

Otherwise in Windows - check the date and time are correct/ find out why they are failing by googling the error code?

 

[NeTTy]

ALT + F10 on the first splash screen to start the Acer recovery environment.

Otherwise in Windows - check the date and time are correct/ find out why they are failing by googling the error code?

Error code relates to something missing that is required by the install as I said in the first post I belive that it cannot locate or identify the boot records correctly due to the way that acer install the OS.

Date and time are correct.

will give the alt + f10 a try although I don't think it will help as it will just check the OS according to acer is correct?

edit*

Microsoft support says:

Cause

When you install Vista SP2, the Vista SP2 installer must update the system boot files. If third-party disk management tools are used to "clone" disks or partitions, the SP2 installer will be unable to uniquely identify the correct system boot files.

Resolution


To work around this issue, turn off the computer and physically unplug all drives that are not required for starting Windows. Power up the computer and restart the service pack installation.

If the workaround is not successful, the alternative is to perform a clean-install."

Clean install isn't an option due to not having the install disks, they only have one hard drive and I doubt that removing oprical drives will be of any use.