Installation of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) often leads to an unbootable computer, which doesn't allow any further data access. When attempting to install SP1 on an already corrupted hard drive, it not only fails the installation, but also makes Windows Vista unable to boot. So, the precautionary measure against Hard Drive Recovery needs can be to run chkdsk /f command before trying to install SP1 and disabling background HDD defragmentation utilities that might otherwise corrupt Windows system files on trying to install SP1.
To be specific, here we'll mention an error message that might occur after the failure of SP1 install. Suppose you run Windows Installer to install SP1. During installation, the system reboots two or three times, but suddenly shows a black screen with a single-line error message, mentioned below:
!! 0xc0190036 !! 4068/72408 (cdosys.dll.mui)
The error suggests that Windows Installer is trying to patch a file named 'cdosys.dll.mui', but is unable to do so because it is corrupted. You can confirm the issue by running chkdsk /f that will prompt the file as corrupted if this is the case. In most of the cases, chkdsk cannot repair the corrupted file.
User Action
If you encounter the above or similar issue, you can consider following any of these suggestions to
Recover Hard Drive:
Boot the computer using Windows Vista install disc and run 'Startup Repair' and/or 'System Restore'
Get another hard drive, mirror your damaged hard drive, re-attach your hard drive to the original computer and delete corrupted cdosys.dll.mui file. To delete the damaged file, boot your computer using Windows Vista install disc, go to its command-prompt, and use 'ren' command for the file. Now, install SP1 again which will replace the file on finding it absent.
If any of the above solutions does not work, perform a clean install of Windows Vista. After you do so, restore lost data from a previous backup. But if no healthy data backup is present, use of a
hard drive recovery software is advisable.
A prime application used to Recover Hard Drive data in case it is lost or deleted is Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery software. This is a Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2003, and 2000 compatible utility that incorporates several advanced recovery features, like disk cloning, disk imaging, and more.
