Windows 7: Repair Install

Brink. No, SP2 is not installed. It was, but I uninstalled it before trying do do the Re-install.

Is it a "retail" upgrade disc?

Are you running the the installation process from within the started Windows 7 and not at boot?

If so, what error is it giving you?

when u select the upgrade option during the installation process. what happens to your favorites et al? and if by chance there is a problem with the upgrade process and it fails, where does that leave the user? does he lose everything?

Hello Sammy,

Usually if a repair install fails, it will automatically cancel the installation and revert back to where you were before doing the repair installation. However, if say you lost power while doing the repair install, then you could lose everything.

You should always create a backup of anything that you do not want to lose to be safe. Anything can happen.

Hello Rick, and welcome to Seven Forums.

I'm sorry, but a repair install can only be done from within a started Windows 7, and not at boot.

Thanks Brink. I have maybe done one "upgrade" in my 30 years of computing. I always do a fresh install. If I understand the STICKY in your first post, pretty much everything (favorites, email, directories) with the added exceptions remain intact during the "upgrade/repair" process?

That would be understood correctly.

Hi Brink,

Excellent advice. My repair/upgrade worked out well...so far. Other than already mentioned in the first page, sticky. Are there any common files that sometimes aren't copied or transferred over? If at all possible, I don't want to keep the old directory (installation) around if I don't need to. Thx

Hello Sammy,

That's great news. There shouldn't be anything that didn't copy over, but it wouldn't hurt to hang on to the old directory for a few days just to be safe before deleting it.

The good news is unfortunately, short lived. I noticed my PC running considerably and unacceptably slower with the upgrade/repair. Booting up is taking longer than before as well. In addition, I had a USB 3 Driver issue where I couldn't upgrade to the NEC Driver. See: USB3 install fail: feature transfer error: 2

What I would like to know,perhaps this question needs to be moved to the SETUP installation thread, is can I create another NEW installation on my C drive, keeping this old exisiting installation in tact and if necessary booting to it? Basically creating a dual boot with my old and new installation. If there is an app and data that I must use, I would like to reboot to that.

I have an Acronis Image of a fresh clean install of C that I did when I brought home my PC. However, installing that would result in me losing my data or taking a great deal of time in backing it up or moving it to other drives.

The other option I have considered but Partition Magic is now dead. Is creating another partition on my current HD that Win 7 currently resides and using Acronis to copy the image to that.