How feasible is not to update Windows Vista?

• Fabian wrote on 2011-09-10 12:02

  Quote from Yoorah;583796:

  You need to install all updates, man. :| No updates is one of the major ways you get hacked/infected in the first place.

  
  
  After installing the updates, my computer stopped working though. D:
  
  
  

  Quote from TA;583803:

  What exactly is happening that is making you reinstall, anyways?

  
  
  My laptop stops working. More specifically, it never reaches the Windows logo when you start it....wait, I'll have to be even more specific...
  
  Here is how it is right now:
  
  My laptop sometimes freezes out of nowhere (can't move mouse, no keys work, etc etc) and the only thing I can do to get it to work is by holding the power button to shut it down. Once it is off, I proceed to turn it on again, but it takes like 20 minutes for it go past the "@Microsoft" loading screen. After waiting for it to load, it turns dark (as in this is what usually happens after the loading screen, but 100x times faster), then the mouse arrow appears on the screen and appears to be waiting for the Windows logo to appear. Shortly afterwards, the screen turns into a different shade of black (as in the Windows logo is just about to appear), but then the computer crashes (blue screen of death) and the cycle repeats. Once this happens I can't go into safe mode or anything at all.
  
  So the only option to get my computer working again is to do a clean install via Vaio's software (f10 key). I can't use the system restores because there's something wrong with the last ones made, and the first ones made have some kind of error about they already existing (I seem to have found a fix to this through google, but I've yet to try it).
  
  I'll post some other things as I remember them lol. Guess I should go to a forum for repairs in case of a virus? (avast caught one....)
  
  
  Sorry about the one-hour-late reply, I was doing a boot scan with Avast.
• TA wrote on 2011-09-10 12:24
  Sounds like you have a hardware failure. It's not a virus.
  
  It's just going to keep getting worse, no matter how many times you reformat.
• Fabian wrote on 2011-09-10 12:35

  Quote from TA;583885:

  Sounds like you have a hardware failure. It's not a virus.
  
  It's just going to keep getting worse, no matter how many times you reformat.

  
  
  I suspected this too, but after running Vaio's hardware check option, it detected no failures in hardware. :(
• Fynl wrote on 2011-09-10 22:02

  Quote from Fabian;583871:

  After installing the updates, my computer stopped working though. D:
  
  
  
  
  My laptop stops working. More specifically, it never reaches the Windows logo when you start it....wait, I'll have to be even more specific...
  
  Here is how it is right now:
  
  My laptop sometimes freezes out of nowhere (can't move mouse, no keys work, etc etc) and the only thing I can do to get it to work is by holding the power button to shut it down. Once it is off, I proceed to turn it on again, but it takes like 20 minutes for it go past the "@Microsoft" loading screen. After waiting for it to load, it turns dark (as in this is what usually happens after the loading screen, but 100x times faster), then the mouse arrow appears on the screen and appears to be waiting for the Windows logo to appear. Shortly afterwards, the screen turns into a different shade of black (as in the Windows logo is just about to appear), but then the computer crashes (blue screen of death) and the cycle repeats. Once this happens I can't go into safe mode or anything at all.
  
  So the only option to get my computer working again is to do a clean install via Vaio's software (f10 key). I can't use the system restores because there's something wrong with the last ones made, and the first ones made have some kind of error about they already existing (I seem to have found a fix to this through google, but I've yet to try it).
  
  I'll post some other things as I remember them lol. Guess I should go to a forum for repairs in case of a virus? (avast caught one....)
  
  
  Sorry about the one-hour-late reply, I was doing a boot scan with Avast.

  
  
  Same thing was happening to my computer when I was running XP. I thought the updates were doing it, too, but it turned out the hard drive was failing (badly) and (supposedly, according to people online) the updates were trying to install into bad sectors or something and either got corrupted or only got half installed which screwed things up. Not sure if that's what actually happened, but after swapping to a new hard drive everything went smoothly.
• Fabian wrote on 2011-09-11 01:32

  Quote from Fynl;584019:

  Same thing was happening to my computer when I was running XP. I thought the updates were doing it, too, but it turned out the hard drive was failing (badly) and (supposedly, according to people online) the updates were trying to install into bad sectors or something and either got corrupted or only got half installed which screwed things up. Not sure if that's what actually happened, but after swapping to a new hard drive everything went smoothly.

  
  
  I see. My best bet would be to go without updating (at the risk of security), wouldn't it? I really have no money to buy a new laptop right now. QQ
• Yoorah wrote on 2011-09-11 01:47
  Try running chkdsk /f. Not the best disk repair software, but at least it might mark bad sectors on your disk so that your updates don't get installed onto those areas.. if that's really what the problem is about.
• Fabian wrote on 2011-09-11 02:41

  Quote from Yoorah;584167:

  Try running chkdsk /f. Not the best disk repair software, but at least it might mark bad sectors on your disk so that your updates don't get installed onto those areas.. if that's really what the problem is about.

  
  
  Well, Check Disk runs a lot of times when I can't get to the log screen. At first, it fixed the problems, but later on it was unable to. :<
  
  I'm going to run it right now though. It might just work. :D
• Yoorah wrote on 2011-09-11 04:22
  Oh, and just to add to that, you don't need to buy a whole new laptop. You could just get a new hard drive for it. xd A decent laptop hard drive will cost you less than $100. Can't say if it really is the hard drive that's failing in your case, though. If chkdsk finds tons of errors, then I guess it is. x(
• Fabian wrote on 2011-09-11 04:31

  Quote from Yoorah;584260:

  Oh, and just to add to that, you don't need to buy a whole new laptop. You could just get a new hard drive for it. xd A decent laptop hard drive will cost you less than $100. Can't say if it really is the hard drive that's failing in your case, though. If chkdsk finds tons of errors, then I guess it is. x(

  
  
  Yup, but my laptop is like 4 years old and has a crappy graphics card, so I was hoping to save for a new one. I didn't expect it to stop working like this though, I was hoping I'd be able to use use till I got a new one. D:
  
  Thanks for the advise though. ^^