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Think Outside Microsoft's Box-How to Boot Win7 DVD and Upgrade to Win7
Hi Brink -- I have lurked here for some time, and oftentimes find some really useful information. You have given quite a lot to this community. Good job!
I, too, have a similar problem, which was caused by Paragon-Software's Partition Manager 11.
The back story is that while launching the app for a totally different reason (which that app could not accomplish), I noticed defrag MFT and compress MFT options, which, as per the software, improves NTFS performance.
Since I have quite a few internal and external drives, I started with the external ones. The routines worked flawlessly and very quickly (seconds). Next, I had the app do all internal drives except my boot/system drive, C, and the D drive. It needed to reboot to accomplish these, and I agreed.
Upon booting, the app displayed four processes (no detail as to drive letters or whether the current process was defrag or compress), and as they were completed, a checkmark appeared. First two were quick, the third took a little longer (maybe 15 seconds), and the last sat there for about a half hour.
I thought it was time to reset. Oops.
I can no longer boot to the system, in any Windows mode. After the PC does its BIOS checks, etc, the system looks like it is proceeding (I notice 1/4" bluish lines about a couple mm thick running across the very topmost part of my screen (the colors of Paragon's software), with a BSOD soon to follow.
Having solved many such problems over the last 30 years, I have quite a bag of tricks, including the latest Dart7 beta 3, which adds quite a few more options to the recover repair screen most are familiar with from the Win7 DVD's repair screen, along with many Linux-based CDs, and other recovery CDs. Yes, I have checked each of the drives using the latest version of TestDisk, from CGSecurity and "chkdsk /b", to be thorough, and the drives are just fine.
They all failed to resolve the boot issue.
Now, there is a solution, but I lack the details.
When you boot the Windows 7 DVD and choose install/upgrade, that routine checks the system boot drive and makes its decision to proceed based upon what it sees (or does so, even earlier in the process). This determines whether you can do an upgrade from the booted Windows 7 DVD (think in-place upgrade, or the newer phrased repair installation).
If we can discover what it is looking to find (be it file, folder or registry entry) that would permit it to do an in-place/repair installation, we could address those findings and we would be home free.
Think outside Microsoft's mantra as to how or from where the repair installation needs to take place, since it is based solely upon what they support, not what can be accomplished. I am not interested in what Microsoft supports.
If it will resolve the issue, support is not needed.
Are you or anyone else up to the challenge?
Last edited by MarkAtHome; 10 Jul 2011 at 22:49. Reason: Subject title change