Windows 7 - Repair Install

Hello Mycenius, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Sorry, but no. A repair install (aka: in-place upgrade) can only be done from within Windows started.

However, you could do a custom install at boot to have everything in your current installation placed inside the C:\Windows.old folder in the new installation. You will then be able to copy what you like back into the new installation from the C:\Windows.old folder.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks Shawn - appreciate the info. I am going to try rolling back the 3 update 'packages' first using the command prompt in recovery mode, and if that fails I will try the custom install as per your suggestion.

FTR this is the error I repeatedly get when my box loops in Recovery State:

Problem Event Name: StartupRepairOffline
Sig 1: 6.1.7600.16385
Sig 2: 6.1.7600.16385
Sig 3: unknown
Sig 4: 21201049
Sig 5: AutoFailover
Sig 6: 7
Sig 7: CorruptFile
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

Cheers,

John

Hi. I have qestions. Point 7 says "Windows 7 will now check online for and install any available installation updates", will this work on wireless broadband? and can someone please explain point 18 to me. I ahve read it many times but its like reading Chinese. Please, what does all this mean "18. Check to see if you are missing any user files. If you are, then you can copy them from the C:\Windows.old or the hidden protected operating system C:\$INPLACE.~TR and C:\WINDOWS.~Q backup folders." Thank you in advance.

Hello Jimbo, and welcome to Seven Forums.

(Point 7) - Windows will check for a internet connection while doing this. If one is available that Windows can connect to, Windows will check and install the update if one is available. If one is not available, or cannot be used for some reason, Windows will skip the update and continue the installation without it.

(Point 18) - When you do a repair install (in-place upgrade), Windows may make a copy of your current installation or files in the locations in bold above in your post. When the repair install is complete, you would check the files you may have had in your C:\Users\(user-name) user folders to see if you may be missing any. If you are, then you may be able to copy them back from the locations in bold above in your post.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

My scenario:

Windows XP and Windows 7 on separate partitions on the same drive. Running low on space (even though I have a separate 750gb drive which is where I install programs and store data, some programs (Visual Studio) have to use the C:\ for some files even if the main program is installed on another drive/partition).

I got a larger drive and used Easus Partition manager to clone the partitions to the new drive. Everything looked like it worked okay, but there are small issues with my user profile, which I don't think made it fully intact. Some of my Windows program icons have a generic icon (Media Player, Microsoft Office), and the main problem is that I want to install Visual Studio 2010 on my computer and it installs fine, but the different components within Visual Studio do not work. No code highlighting or intellisense. I think this has something to do with my user profile corruption from cloning the partitions.

Anyway, sorry to be long-winded about this, but will a repair install fix my user profile corruption?

Hi Shawn - FWIW when I did my Custom Install at the weekend it arbitrarily moved all contents of the Users directory to the C:\Windows.old directory - a copy of my user profile was not preserved in the actual C:\Users directory... Note I did not use the same user name for my default admin/power user at install - in case it overwrote the old directory so this 'may' have been the reason...

However all files appeared to be in the back-up user directory in Windows.old as noted, although a couple were corrupt (but I suspect this related to the original issue with my RAID array that got me stuck in the repair loop and forced me to do the custom re-install).



Cheers,

John

Ok, I got to Step 7. It looked like it finished downloading updates, but just hung there for over 2 hours. I had to quit, tried to run it again and it still hung. Any suggestions?

If you do a clean install will it save your files to the windows.old folder, or is that only with the custom install?

Hello NokComputer, and welcome to Seven Forums.

You would only get the Windows.old folder when doing a custom install. Depending on why you needed to do a repair install, have you already tried doing a system restore using a restore point dated before the issue to see that may help.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hi Brink, thanks for the reply. The reason I was doing the repair install was basically my computer is beyond slow now, can't uninstall/install programs, run cmd's hang, event viewer doesn't work, everything hangs and will not complete. Don't know what the culprit is. Earlier this week, I had trouble booting my computer (took an hour or two), then everything in windows slowed to a crawl (it would take add/remove programs 10 minutes to show). I have reason to believe it has something to do with a display driver, some faulty driver - or even possibly an external hard drive that was causing boot problems. But really it could be anything since so many problems starting popping up (it was just a downward spiral). I really doubt it's a virus (hardly ever on internet). This is on a 5-month old system with only a handfull of programs installed, windows updates set to update automatically, well maintained system. Don't understand what went wrong, even thought maybe a windows update could've messed it up.

With that many issues, you might use the free program MalwareBytes to check to see if you have a virus or some other form of malware.

Otherwise, you may be better off doing a custom install to start fresh, copy over any files you wanted from the Windows.old folder, then delete the Windows.old folder when ready to regain that space.