Recovery Partition - Create

   Warning

THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO REPLACE YOUR WINDOWS 7 DVD, HARD DRIVES FAIL, AND YOU SHOULD ALWAYS HANG ONTO THE DISK, THIS IS SIMPLY TO SPEED UP THE PROCESS OF REINSTALLING OR DOING A RECOVERY

This recovery partition will only be available to you assuming that your bootmanager is in tact, if it becomes corrupted it will be inaccessible just like your copy of windows, another good reason for hanging on to the original disk

   Note

it is recommended that you allow windows to create the 100MB System reserved partition upon installation if you plan to do this or you will have to repeat it everytime you reinstall

1. Download Easy BCD 2.0 from here: EasyBCD 2.0 Beta Builds - The NeoSmart Forums (you will need to register on the forum first)

2. open disk management, (type "partition" into the start menu its the first option that comes up)

3a Right click a partition with free space, and click "Shrink Volume" when it asks you to select how much space to shrink by allocate 4GB or 4096MB

3b Right Click the Unallocated Space and Click "New Simple Volume"

4. click ok through the next few screens, i recommend assigning it letter Z:\ so you dont get confused and accidentally delete it or save other files here

5. place your Windows 7 DVD in your drive and go to Computer, right click and then click Open
NOTE: At this point please make sure you have "hide protected operating system files" DISABLED as it occasionally corrupts the copy, to do this press alt in any explorer window, then click tools>folder options>views>hide protected operating system files.

6. Copy the entire contents of the DVD to your Z:\ Partition

7. open Easy BCD and click "add/remove entries" click the tab labelled WinPE,
When it asks for a path browse to "Z:\sources\boot.wim" and click ok, then click "add new entry"
NOTE: At this point there is a good chance easybcd will tell you that the operation failed, just click ok and do it again, from what i can see this is simply its way of asking if your sure, and it will work 2nd time around.

8. thats it your done, when you reboot you will have 2 options, Windows 7, and NST WinPE Image, NST WinPE image is your recovery partition and will act as if you'd put the disk in.

   Note

It has come to my attention that Windows has an annoying habit of corrupting the Recovery Partition, especially after Disk Cleanups and Defrags. To get around this Open Disk Management (type it into the start menu) and right click your Recovery Partition, remove the letter so that windows cant see it any more. (Don't worry it will still boot, this just stops Windows from writing files to it)

   Information

This tutorial is the intellectual property of (c)2009 Martin Joy a.k.a severedsolo and is only authorised to be hosted on sevenforums.com This tutorial is not to be copied without my explicit consent and when consent is granted the original author must be credited along with a link to this tutorial

Related Tutorials

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• How to Create a Windows 7 System Repair Disc

 

[si8mon]

Great Tutorial. Just wondering, Is it possible that instead of the recovery partition appearing on boot up. I can access it by pressing the F8 or F9 keys (any F key will do). So when I turn on my comp it just boots up directly to Windows 7 and when i do need to access the recovery partition i just can press a certain key.

Thanks Simon

 

[severedsolo]

hi si8mon, funny you should say that, i was having exactly this discussion with gregrocker last week, the conclusion we came to was that basically, it would mean some kind of BIOS mod, although i will shortly be testing to see if its possible to "fool" the OEM BIOS into loading the wrong partition (i kind of have an idea how to do it, but im not sure it will work) ill post back when i get the results

 

[si8mon]

hi si8mon, funny you should say that, i was having exactly this discussion with gregrocker last week, the conclusion we came to was that basically, it would mean some kind of BIOS mod, although i will shortly be testing to see if its possible to "fool" the OEM BIOS into loading the wrong partition (i kind of have an idea how to do it, but im not sure it will work) ill post back when i get the results

Any luck yet?

Thanks , si8mon.

 

[severedsolo]

not yet, still working on it! Im trying to figure out how to get the BIOS to load boot.wim rather than the OEM software, to be honest, im thinking a BIOS mod is going to be the only way forward, and I have no idea how to even attempt that

add into that every single OEM uses their own version, and every BIOS is slightly different... well you can see the headaches right? even if by some miracle i figure it out, it will only work on my own BIOS, and not any one elses

 

[si8mon]

not yet, still working on it! Im trying to figure out how to get the BIOS to load boot.wim rather than the OEM software, to be honest, im thinking a BIOS mod is going to be the only way forward, and I have no idea how to even attempt that

add into that every single OEM uses their own version, and every BIOS is slightly different... well you can see the headaches right? even if by some miracle i figure it out, it will only work on my own BIOS, and not any one elses

Yeah BIOS mods sounds pretty risky to me so i might as well forget about it. Thanks for trying though. If by miracle you do get it to work please post back.

 

[severedsolo]

UPDATE: Note added to end of tutorial to get around a bug where Windows would corrupt the Recovery Partiton

 

[brianzion]

in a pickle

i haven't the windows disc the pc i bought never come with one it was on drive d that the 1TB hard drive had been partitioned with. i sent the pc off for repair and it came back with just c drive on the hard drive so i was wondering how i would reinstall windows if need be? is it with a system image?

best regards brian.

 

[severedsolo]

Hi Brian. Id phone the manufacturor to get a Recovery Disk if I were you. System Images arent resotrable without a recovery partition or Windows disk

 

[brianzion]

hi thanks for reply. i have the recovery discs i made when i first got the pc will these be ok?

 

[severedsolo]

It depends, If the Recovery Disks just facilitate restoring from the Missing Recov Partition then you could have an issue.

If however they are "true" recovery disks, (IE you can reinstall Windows just using the disks) or they allow uyou to boot into WinRE (windows recovery enviroment, or "Repair My Computer") then they should do the job fine

 

[brianzion]

okey doke i will get in touch with packard bell also the repair station it came back from

 

[Topi]

Thank you severedsolo! This is really great.

I do not re-install Windows 7 a lot, now it has been installed since December 2009, but if and when I need to re-install I want it to go fast, smooth and easy!

One easy question, I think I know the answer, but better to be safe than sorry.

When SP1 rolls out. If I create a custom ISO which has SP1 and other stuff slipstreamed and I extract it to the "recovery" -partition, it will work the same way?

And is it ok to just delete the old files and put the new extracted files to the partition or do I need to use EasyBCD again? I would think not unless the boot.wim location is changed, am I right?

And thank you once again severedsolo!

 

[severedsolo]

Thank you severedsolo! This is really great.

I do not re-install Windows 7 a lot, now it has been installed since December 2009, but if and when I need to re-install I want it to go fast, smooth and easy!

One easy question, I think I know the answer, but better to be safe than sorry.

When SP1 rolls out. If I create a custom ISO which has SP1 and other stuff slipstreamed and I extract it to the "recovery" -partition, it will work the same way?

And is it ok to just delete the old files and put the new extracted files to the partition or do I need to use EasyBCD again? I would think not unless the boot.wim location is changed, am I right?

And thank you once again severedsolo!

I see no reason why a custom SP1 Slipstream shouldn't work exactly the same way. What I would do if your planning to do this, is remove the Recovery Entry with EasyBCD then Format the Recovery partition and start from scratch

The recovery partition, (in my experience) is very finicky about how it is made.

I'll let you know once I do it myself

Dont forget, this can also be used to restore a system image quickly without having to dig out your disk as well

and your welcome.

 

[jamel36]

I found an easier way that gives you the F4 Option and works for all windows operating systems. No programming a simple install file

Instant PC Recovery

 

[SIW2]

Hi jamel,

Are you planning to keep it a secret?

Thanks. I hadn't come across that before.

A hundred bucks for an imaging app. It had better be good.


There are plenty of free versions that do a great job.

Plenty of others, like Pargon will do the same thing - store an image on a separate drive or partition which also contains the restore app. They are usually accesssible by an F key , too.

Thirty bucks or so will do it.

 

[jamel36]

Sorry it is Instant PC Recovery Instant PC Recovery

 

[john1972]

Thanks

Thanks Jamel this works for me because I'm not technical and I have tried the other programs above but instant pc recovery software is much easier if your not computer savvy like me.

 

[nelsonw]

Bogged down

I get all the way to the sixth step and when I try to save the entire contents of the installation disk to the Z partition, it boggs down during the copying process . . . freezes up with 14 mintues remaining. So what do I do now?

 

[nelsonw]

Bogged down

I'm new to this forum, so I'm not sure by last post was posted or not. But, I get all the way through step 6, and when I try to save the W7 installation disk contents to Drive Z, it boggs down during the copying process . . . freezes with 14 mintues remaining. So, what do I do now?

 

[severedsolo]

Hi nelsonw,

Firstly, bogging down during the copying process is normal, 3GB (ish) of data is a lot to shift from a DVD drive, and DVD's aren't exactly quick.

Personally, I would recommend walking away from it for a while, see if it completes by itself. Also check whether the hard drive/DVD drive are still working, if they are then it's still copying, even if Windows isn't telling you its copying.