Windows 7 Upgrade Causing 'Endless Boot Loop'

You know that “Broken Promises” ad that Apple is running on TV these days, which essentially calls Microsoft a liar for saying that Windows 7 is “different” because it won’t cause the problems that previous operating systems did for customers?

At first blush, the ad seemed mean-spirited to me, but those screams you’re hearing are from Microsoft users trying, and mostly failing, to upgrade to Windows 7. Worse, there are currently hundreds of posts on the Microsoft Windows 7 forum from frustrated users stuck in an “endless boot loop.”

Equally frustrated Microsoft support personnel are trying to guide customers through an upgrade process that isn’t going smoothly to say the least. Ryan Thieman, a Microsoft Answers support engineer, told one user, “I am going to recommend we do a blanket upgrade of your systems drivers, particularly your chipset drivers.”

If that doesn’t sound painful enough, after taking the user through a step-by-step reinstall of all system drivers, he advised, “try to upgrade Windows again.”

Try?

Hoo-boy.

Users are also discovering that they can’t find their old files, which has Microsoft support scrambling to resolve.

For those who’s [sic] systems are unbootable, do not perform a format and clean install yet. We should still be able to recover your data from the machine… Unfortunantly [sic], at this point, for those who are unable to boot into Windows, we will have to go with a clean install after your data has been backed up.

How about all that customer feedback that was used to make Windows 7 so great? “Johnfbscot,” a forum member who says he participated in beta-testing early versions of Windows 7, posted the following comment:

The problem with Microsoft during Beta and [release candidate testing] was and is that they do NOT reply to suggestions, comments and problems/bugs located during trials. That is why the forums are full of comments and am sure as with Vista (that was never sorted) will be here for the next few years to sort out W7 because Microsoft never listen.

These could be initial growing pains, but this is definitely not what Microsoft wanted after early issues scuttled Vista’s chances for success.