Windows 7: Activation issue after clean install on new hard drive

...is a scotsWOMAN (despite the alias!)

(see - I do keep an eye on you!)

Mr Bongo is my cat's name.

Okay so after making a Macrium image of Recovery partition from old drive, it showed up alongside C: etc as drive H.

I used EasyBCD to add boot.wim from the Sources folder to add new entry.

Restarted, hit F4 to access Samsung Recovery Solution but again, the only option appearing is Windows 7.

So the plan is to try this with the init. files instead of boot.wim, add the entry and try that way?

Those big files will not be bootable.

That is what boot.wim is for.

If you added as a winpe entry, you should have an entry on your initial boot menu called NST WINPE.



No need to use F4 - just restart windows normally and you should see the menu.

Select that and see what happens.

I will also try selecting NST WINPE as default, as it was still set to Windows 7.

Here goes...

Weird. Since I restarted H is no more.

Can I add a boot entry from the copied Recovery folder in C: and boot from there or does it have to be a different drive?

Yes you can add a .wim that is anywhere.

Probably best to have all the recovery folder on a different partition from the one you will be installing to

If it is a .wim , it must be added as a winpe entry.

You need to browse to the wim , then click Add Entry:




Boot.wim should boot up fine.

There will be some kind of oem restore/reinstall program in it.

That is likely to get lost - it probably won't recognize where it is.

Worth a try.

Don't worry about that for now - just see if you can get it to boot up.

Ok the NST WINPE option came up at boot. Went with that and it took me to Samsung Recovery Solution which hung at the initial screen, similar to how the old drive behaved at boot.

I'm gonna get on the desktop and try again, leave it to hang and see if it does anything in it's own time.

The samsung reinstall app. is expecting to find a pre defined partition layout - it is also expecting to find it's install media in particular place.

No surprise it is hanging.

What I would normally do is mount the boot.wim and drop in a little batch file - start that up with winpeshl.in, and the batch file will do the job using imagex to a partition you select.

However, for that to work - you need to be able to point it at some kind of install.wim file.

Because you haven't been able to get an install.wim created - it's not much use here.

I am not familiar with the Samsung recovery files. I would need to get hold of them to figure out how to get an installable wim .

I changed one of the init files to init.wim, added it to EasyBCD boot.

Chose NST WINPE when I restarted to see what happens and got this:

Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1. Insert your Windows Installation disc and restart your computer.
2. Choose your language settings and click 'Next'
3. Click repair your computer.

If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

File: \Windows\System32\Boot\Winload.exe

Status: 0xc000000d

Info: The selected entry could not beloaded because the application is missing or corrupt.