Repair Your Computer in Windows Vista Or 7
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Repair your computer in Windows Vista or 7 How to use System Recovery Options for repairing Windows Vista or 7 installations Visiting www.winhelp.us adds cookies (the non-edible ones) to your device. More non-scary details are in Privacy Policy. Stay safe! When Windows is not able to start even in Safe Mode, then most probably there are some errors or missing files on your hard disk that prevent Windows Vista or 7 from starting correctly. Repair Your Computer is a set of tools for recovering from Windows such errors and it is available on Windows installation DVD. Windows 7 users can also create a System Repair Disc, or borrow one from friends - as long as the hardware architecture (32-bit/x86 or 64-bit/x64) matches. Here are some troubleshooting steps to try before using Repair Your Computer: Last Known Good Configuration often solves booting and stability problems after installing software, drivers, or messing with Registry entries. Always boot to Safe Mode at least once - this often repairs corrupted file system and essential system files. If Windows is able to boot, use System File Checker and icacls.exe to repair corrupted system files. While Windows is running, use free WhoCrashed for determining BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) causes. Also, Reliability Monitor might reveal faulty drivers or software. System Restore can help reverting back to a state when your computer was running normally. Windows 7 user might be able to launch Repair Your Computer or Startup Repair from a hidden system partition. The two options are described later in this article. You can also legally download Windows 7 (with Service Pack 1) installation image from DigitalRiver and burn the contents of ISO file to DVD with Windows 7 Disc Image Burner or CDBurnerXP. The full list of editions and other languages is available at http://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/14-windows-7-direct-download-links: Windows 7 Home Premium x86 (32-bit) Windows 7 Home Premium x64 (64-bit) Windows 7 Professional x86 Windows 7 Professional x64 Windows 7 Ultimate x86 Windows 7 Ultimate x64 To put Windows Vista or 7 installation media onto a bootable USB drive instead, see the Create bootable Windows installation media on a USB stick guide on my sister site, www.winhelp.info. If you do not have the disc (a common case for computers that have Windows Vista or 7 pre- installed) and your friends do not have a matching one either, you can use my Data Recovery CD/USB for fixing errors on disk or repairing Master Boot Records (MBR), but other options of Repair Your Computer are unavailable. Do not use Windows 7 DVD for repairing Windows Vista installations, or vice versa! You can only use the Command Prompt option on the disc to fix file system errors. If you can borrow a correct Windows installation DVD from a friend, make sure you get the right version: you can only use 32-bit Windows disc for repairing 32-bit Windows installations and 64-bit Windows disc for fixing 64-bit Windows installations! Launching computer repair in Windows 7 without installation DVD or System Repair Disc Windows 7 users can run Repair Your Computer or Startup Repair from a special hidden partition on hard disk. 1. Launch Startup Repair offered at computer startup The Launch Startup Repair option is offered automatically after Windows 7 detects that it failed to start the last time. If the failure happened just once due to power failure during Windows startup, you can ignore the offer by pressing Arrow Down key on your keyboard to select Start Windows Normally instead and then pressing Enter key. Otherwise, you should use Launch Startup Repair (recommended) option. Move to Startup Repair section. 2. Repair your computer in Windows 7 Advanced Boot Options menu To access the whole set of recovery tools without using the Windows 7 installation DVD or System Repair Disc, you need to open Advanced Boot Options menu right before Windows 7 starts. After you power on your computer, you might see some full-screen logo or black screen with gray texts such as "AMI", "Intel", "Testing Memory", "Hard disk", etc. Press F8 key on your keyboard repeatedly right after you see such screen disappear. This will open Windows 7 Advanced Boot Options menu. If you see the Select Boot Device menu instead, press Esc key to hide it and then press F8 key again a few times. Use arrow keys on your keyboard to select Repair Your Computer and press Enter key to confirm your selection. Read on for detailed instructions on using the tools. Launching Repair Your Computer from Windows Vista or 7 DVD/System Repair Disc If your computer does not boot from DVD, read the Computer boot order on how to change boot order. After you boot your computer using Windows DVD or System Repair Disc, a black screen appears with gray text "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD". Press some key on your keyboard (Space and Enter are the most common ones ) within 5 seconds to launch Windows from the disc. Windows will load some files from the disc, this takes time. If using Windows Vista/7 installation DVD, Install Windows dialog appears. Select your preferred settings from Time and currency format and Keyboard or input method boxes. I suggest you leave Language to "English" here to better understand this article. If using Windows Vista/7 System Repair Disc, System Recovery Options dialog appears instead. Here you can only select the appropriate keyboard layout. Click Next to continue. Windows installation media users will see a big tempting Install now button. Do not click it! Click Repair your computer in the lower left corner instead. System Repair Disc skips this step and continues with looking for Windows installations. Recovery environment will then look for present installation(s) on hard disks. This might take up to a few minutes. Click Next after the correct installation has been detected. If you have multiple versions of Windows installed, click the one that is broken. If you see nothing listed here, your computer has a disk controller that Windows Vista or 7 is not able to detect by default. Click Load drivers, insert the CD, floppy disk or DVD that came with your computer or disk controller and load appropriate drivers from there. Your Windows installation will then be located. If you have several user accounts on the computer, you might have to log on using the account that has administrative rights. Select an administrator's user name and enter the password. System Recovery Options window then appears with the list of available recovery tools. The tools are almost identically named in Windows Vista and 7. Let's see an overview of the tools next. Please note that if you are using a wrong media here - e.g. Windows Vista installation DVD on Windows 7 PC, or 32-bit version of System Repair Disc on 64-bit Windows - you are able to use the Command Prompt option only. While the other options are not disabled in the list, using these end with error messages and might damage your broken Windows installation even more. Step 1 - Startup Repair in Windows Vista or 7 The very first option to try in case Windows is unable to boot is the Startup Repair (see the two pictures above). Startup Repair will check the condition of your hard disk and see if files needed to launch Windows are present. The process takes several minutes to half an hour. If a problem is found, Startup Repair will try to fix it. This usually takes a few minutes for minor problems, but sometimes the repairs might last for up to half an hour. In case problems were fixed successfully, Startup Repair offers to restart your computer immediately to see if your Windows starts normally now. Often it does! In rare cases, Startup Repairs launches again automatically and does some more fixing. Let it finish its job and Windows should start normally after the next restart. In case Startup Repair was unable to locate or repair problems, you will see one of the following screens. You can click Finish to close Startup Repair and then try some other method of restoring. Or you can click View advanced options for system recovery and support to return to the list of recovery tools. After an unsuccessful repair of Windows 7, Startup Repair suggests using System Restore for fixing your computer. If Startup Repair was your first step in fixing Windows 7 problems, I suggest you click Cancel here and try other recovery tools first. If you've tried all other tools already, click Restore button. Please remember that this System Restore operation cannot be undone - while you will not lose your documents, e-mails, pictures, videos and other personal data, some programs might be removed during the operation. Read this tutorial about System Restore for detailed instructions. After clicking Cancel, Microsoft asks to send some information about the problem to their servers to help creating solutions for such situations. This will not send your personal information to Microsoft, just data about your computer configuration and problems not repaired. If you are really concerned about your privacy, click Don't Send. If you would like to help Microsoft a bit, click Send information about this problem (recommended). Step 1.1 (optional) - use Command Prompt for fixing disk errors and restoring missing system files If you do not have the correct Windows installation/System Repair media, but you still need to check for and fix errors on disks, click Command Prompt in the list.