Damaged windows 7 OEM disk and need files or advise

So First post and not sure if right or in correct area,but I am hoping someone can help. The forum looks promising. congrats!!

So this is a Dell M4400 workstation. I recently did my annual re-install, but I dont think its related. Of course self induced and pounding excessively on mouse pad (forgetting it was over drive) when the machine was having a difficult boot. So I am not 100% sure the install went perfect, but still I directly caused this as not happened before. So after poking the mouse pad with about 5000 foot pounds of pressure a few times it locked up once and for all, may have rebooted not sure. Then I could never get it to boot right again.

First it would boot in safe mode and I took lightly assuming no issue and suddenly after safe boot and re-boot no contendre... At that time it started offering options to let windows perform startup repair in which it looked like it completed but just seems to go in never ending circle of startup repair (unsuccessful). The bottom line is that the drive wont boot. It lets me enter password and then goes to never land eventually booting back to normal start or startup repair option.

I have analyzed the drive with get data back and the first time it pulled about 5 partitions, some may have been the older ones overwritten. Now after several startup repairs, get data back seems to even act like its all F's stating bad something over and over. Next I booted in an acronis restore program, which I will say is the best thing since bread (little known) and saw everything in order, but cant be sure what I am looking at.

The drive is composed of two partitions. one is a 100mb i dont know what and not sure if Dell causes this or windows 7. The other is the 465 plus or minus ramainder. I did note that acronis indicated that the 100mb was the primary - est boot (the way it read)?!?!?! IT should also be noted that acronis noted no errors with the MBR, but an error of something of that nature. I am not recalling forgive my ignorance. The jist was that it seemed like all was there, but maybe not in right place.

To complicate matters my OEM install disk is cracked rigt around the central area damaging the first file folder which appears to contain only licensing stuff so I cant boot with it. I am currently trying to ISO rip it off and get it on a workable disk to boot from and run a full windows repair.

Also I have a dell windows VIsta disk and I am wonder could I just work off this to get where I need to be as I recently researched this today.

Please help, I have been locked in this nasty struggle for a week and my life is in pain....

Thanks in advance
BC

So my windows 7 dvd is cracked about a mm into the data area starting at the central ring. ISO analysis looks to be like the first file area on the disk with the licensing BS is the only thing damaged and that the UDF file system for the primary install data is intact. I am wondering if:
(1) i even need that data from this area?
(2) If i can actually get and install successfully if I can get the data on a readible disk.

The issue is so severe that at first I could not even get the DVD drive to ackowledge there was a disk in it. This seems to be a MAJOR ISSUE as I dont even see how one can use disk data restorative software if the drive wont acknowledge the disk!! I have had the disk resurfaced by a local dvd sales place with a serious machine to do this, but I suspect the foil is damaged in this 1 millimeter area by the center core. I also think it is bent it (as it was stepped on in the case while on the edge of the plastic riser), and that no amount of resurfacing will do as the foil is bent up cause odd light diffractions of unknown consequence. I have ordered a replacement from microsoft but states could be a month. I am also wondering if this will give me the opportunity to re-actiate it on another machine to which it was intended (I did not know I could not move it when purchsed). So do I need the data on that first file? Is it generic enough that I could pull from another disk, even a vista disk? SHould I just trash it. I am ignorant, but not so ignorant that I once compiled a CD of stock Windows original XP pro including all the SP updates and created a ready to boot and load CD due to a newer motherboard demanding such. Please advise.. Thanks in advance...

Before you reinstall, burn the WinPE disk from free Macrium and use that to image your C partition. Then you do not lose your data. Don't scare when you burn the disc because it has to download the Microsoft WAIK during the process - and that is 1.7GB. But the Macrium WinPE disk is excellent for imaging and recovery.

Here is a tutorial on how to deal with it: Imaging with free Macrium

If you are familiar with Linux, you can, of course, rescue your files with a live Linux CD. Puppy would be a good options because it is small and the drives are right on the Puppy desktop (bottom left). Here is how: Recover files from Windows Vista hard disk using Puppy Linux | help.artaro.eu

BBC3 said:

.......... I have ordered a replacement from microsoft but states could be a month.....

Just a query. If it is a DELL OEM disk, only DELL can provide the replacement disk with embedded OEM activation data which self activates on a clean install with OEM-SLP key and BIOS check..Has Microsoft told you that they will provide the DELL OEM disk?

Getting the DELL OEM disk is always advantageous since you can do a clean install any number of times and it will self-activate. And you have been routinely doing a clean install periodically.

If you install with any other media, you will be activating it using the COA key and calling Microsoft over the phone.

In such a case it will be prudent for you to backup the image after the phone-activation, and use that image for subsequent clean installs.

For.... nobody seems to know for certain, whether subsequent reinstalls with the COA Key will go through with automatic online activation, or whether you have to call Microsoft everytime to activate and also whether there is a limit to the number of times you can activate with that COA key.