Need Help

[kween]

Hi,
My Acer 5730 Travelmate came preloaded with Vista Home Premium. But after a system crash, re-installed Vista on one drive and Windows 7 on the other.
Now 3 months later, Vista system properties shows 'activate Windows now'. But despite numerous attempts am unsuccessful.
Vista System seems to work fine except at reduced speed. Device Manager window shows a completely blank window with only menu bars showing. Also Add New Hardware not working. In Network Connections, my LAN connection is not showing, where one can see the sent and received bytes.
Sorry if this is the wrong place to post. Please kindly bear with a noob and any/all help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks kween

[Alboguy]

I think you should make a repair from the setup cd because your system seems to be a mess. Or you can restore to an earlier time with System Restore.

[hellnoire]

I'd either do a repair or a reinstall... that's not normal, even for bloated Vista.

[kween]

I think you should make a repair from the setup cd because your system seems to be a mess. Or you can restore to an earlier time with System Restore.

Already tried system restore with no luck. Guess just trying to hold out on re-installing again. Thanks for your input.

[Redy]

I'd either do a repair or a reinstall... that's not normal, even for bloated Vista.

i agree with hellnoire, this is not good.. anyway why u still using vista, i never used it, i am so happy now with windows 7 it is the best after XP.. try a repair, did u have an anti-virus?..

good luck

[kween]

I'd either do a repair or a reinstall... that's not normal, even for bloated Vista.

Well, it does seem to be a very odd problem and seems like a reinstall may be for the best. Just thought I'd check if any other options were available. Have been struggling with these problems the last few days.

And yes Redy, have anti-virus installed. Had Avast free, then tried to install Bitdefender IS, PC Tools IS, but none of them could be installed / configured properly, specially the firewall could not be enabled. So uninstalled them with Revo. And yes did not have two of them installed at the same time.
Have Winpatrol and Prevex and Win firewall enabled.

[hellnoire]

I know I had an odd problem with 7, it not liking being thrown onto a small 120 gig partition, but now that I reinstalled, it seems fine

[kween]

I know I had an odd problem with 7, it not liking being thrown onto a small 120 gig partition, but now that I reinstalled, it seems fine

Would it be ok if I just reinstal over the old. Then all the old data will hopefully be saved in 'windows old' folder? So can get functional faster?

[hellnoire]

You can always try, I've done that in the past and has worked fine.

[kween]

You can always try, I've done that in the past and has worked fine.

Thanks for the heads up , think will do just that this weekend with a clear and calm mind. Looks like NO other option available.