Repair Install - basic questions not covered in tutorial

gregrocker said:

Repair install works fine for most Factory OEM. Just be sure you download the same version and bit rate, burn or write it correctly to stick or DVD. ...
No retail PC can be sold with Windows without a COA sticker as pictured in tutorial. Look under the battery if it isn't on the bottom. ...

Your drivers will all be in place when it restarts as they are now.

Ahh, OK - all makes sense now. Thanks so much for the clarification about the drivers.

And yes - the sticker turns out to be under the battery. D-oh! Well, I suppose forums can be for simple things as well as complicated issues.

BTW it's gonna be a couple of days until I can get around to the Repair Install operation.

DustSailor said:

The drivers are fine, the reason I put forward the driver suggestion was supposed to be if he wanted to update any old drivers. I try to recommend that if someone wants to.

But if he is fine with the drivers he has now, there is no critical reason why he needs to update them.

Many thanks for all your help and patience!

You might want to try some of the disinfection tools given at the beginning of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot.

At a minimum I'd run bootable Windows Defender or similar from the link of other choices, followed by Malwarebytes in Safe Mode if necessary.

You want to know it's clean by several methods before doing Repairs of any sort.

gregrocker said:

You might want to try some of the disinfection tools given at the beginning of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot.

At a minimum I'd run bootable Windows Defender or similar from the link of other choices, followed by Malwarebytes in Safe Mode if necessary.

You want to know it's clean by several methods before doing Repairs of any sort.

OK thanks. I did the following, none of which turned up anything. I guess it's time for Repair Install.

- Malwarebytes full scan in Safe Mode
- Windows Defender
- Startup Repair
- SFC Scannow

Keep us posted. When the worst case scenario is having to do the best possible reinstall, you may end up with a PC that's better than new.

gregrocker said:

Keep us posted. When the worst case scenario is having to do the best possible reinstall, you may end up with a PC that's better than new.

Repair Install went off without a hitch. Everything seems to be back just as it was before the problems, including all my files. After the final restart, not only was networking restored but it had found my router and connected using the password.

I was hoping the procedure would somehow clean out Windows and make things run faster or free up hard drive space, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

A huge *thanks* to everyone who posted here. The generosity and patience I've found at Sevenforums are really terrific.

If this is still the Factory Preinstall and you want to clean it up a bit then there are steps to Clean up the bloatware in my signature picture below.