Is the HD detected in BIOS setup? Is DVD drive set to boot first, then HDD?
There are other bootable AV's in the tutorial to download and burn to CD, boot to disinfect Win7.
Since disinfecting is the first step before doing any repairs, you really haven't even started yet.
Last edited by gregrocker; 01 Aug 2012 at 17:49.
So now I restart, hit F8 and attempt to enter recovery options. Click on repair computer and it eventually gets me to the Windows blue background screen with the leaves and the bird. No dialogue box comes up to start repair, just stays on this screen doing nothing. I try this three times and still the same. I notice the little blue light that normally flickers during activity goes off at this point.
You might want to try checking the health of your hard disk. I'm not sure of the make/model of your drive but you could run a bootable diagnostics app from Western Digital (burn the iso to a CD and boot from it) just to make sure the drive reports a good SMART status:
WD Support / Downloads / SATA & SAS / WD VelociRaptor
If it reports the SMART status as anything other than PASS, you need to make sure all of your personal data is safely backed up to some other reliable media before going further.
Use the bootable diagnostics/repair scan provided by the HD maker: HD Diagnostic
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp
Then run Disk Check if necessary creating a full disk partition to do the scan using Step 2.2 here: SSD - HDD Optimize for Windows Reinstallation
Thanks in advance for your help, this will keep me out of mischief for a while.
One quick question, I ran a back up of Data I want to keep in my Windows files using the BackUp thing in Ubuntu, saving it to and old HD I use for storage. Once complete I looked in to check it was ok and the files are all in gzip files. I assume when if and when I get Windows 7 up and running again, I can unzip these and they will be in normal jpeg, mp3 files etc?
I am literally learning as I go along here so bear with me if I'm asking dumb questions.
I would drag the files out intact using explorer and not another OS: Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console
or Paragon rescue disk to recover data.
Relying on a backup program can end in disappointment, and zipped files aren't really necessary.
The Windows Recovery Console tutorial unfortunately will not help me as the nature of my problem means that I have never gotten past the first screenshot in that example. The window opens and I click Repair Computer near the bottom but have never seen the next screen.
Kind of why I had to back up thru Ubuntu OS, I can't find any other way into my files
If Ubuntu will boot then Win7 installer or Repair CD should boot, too. It does for everyone else.
If using the Repair CD, then burn another one. If that fails then download and burn to DVD or write to flash stick the installer from the link in Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot.
Once you have the bootable disk you can complete the other steps. Did you try another bootable AV disk? Burn using ImgBurn at 4x speed which never fails.
If these fail, try resetting the CMOS: Clear CMOS - 3 Ways to Clear the CMOS - Reset BIOS
If disks fail, try flash stick installer. If that fails unplug DVD drive.
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