, Please 
2
I've been running Vista Home Premium for just shy of 3 years without a single problem. Then last night, Dec. 3, 2009, it happened. It booted up but some startup progams did not load so the boot was not complete. There was no response from any program I tried to open. I waited over an hour at one point to see if it was something that would timeout, no go. I attempted to fix startup problems in the troubleshooter, but it found no problems. I booted over and over and over and I got the same exact results (definition of insanity, no?). I then tried a restore back to Nov. 30 and the restore completed successfully, but did not fix the problem. So, factory reset was all that was left.
My system is a Dell XPS 420, Q6600, 3GB, with no modifications whatsoever. Never had to call Dell for the first year it was in warranty, and never had to use that 10GB "recovery" partition Dell installed until now. Good on Dell for keeping it all ready to go. Had to delete the Dell junk as usual, but it's running as fast and smooth as it always has, which verifies it was not a hardware crash.
I had forgotten the joy of restoring a computer to the way one likes it. It's worse than moving. I did it 2 or 3 times a year with XP before Vista came along. Did an MS patch (Windows update) cause this? I think it's possible. The reason I think so is that the same day, my laptop running Vista 64 started acting strangely, although it didn't crash. It only reset the video resolution to it's lowest setting which I easily changed back and so far, no other issues have arisen.
-reply by Geoff
