Thinking in Advance of Crash

Greetings...
Ok,my system setup is in my profile with other information.

My ?

Last week my system would not start,just went to the pretty Windows start up and didn't go any further.No warnings,bells or whistles.It would not go to Safe Mode it would not go anywhere.

Oh,in hide sight I foolishly formatted my D drive taking out my original Factory Restore.I had plenty of repairs and backups but lo and behold my windows said it couldn't be found.

I went out and bought a new system.

Then as I am sitting it up in a spare room I hear the sound of my PC loading that I had removed the side panel from.Maybe it got a little HOT?Dunno???

I am using it now.The old one.Purchased April 2008

?

How do I make some form of backup of the boot sequence or the OS on a DVD too at least get to safe mode or some other form of repair in case the problems surface again.

It has the equivalent of three OS on it with the upgrades and enormous expense included.It is out of warranty or I would be screaming down Microsoft's money tunnel.

BTW can I use the Windows 7 Ultimate 64 upgrade on my new one to upgrade from the 7 Home Premium that's on it now?

Are you as confused as me or is there a simple way too take care of these problems?

Whenever you can't boot into Win7, boot the Win7 DVD Repair console or Repair CD, accept any offered repair and/or click through to Recovery Tools list to run Startup repair repeatedly with reboots to try to start it.

If this fails, choose from the Recovery list "Recover Using a System Image," attach your external drive or have it browse to a secondary drive in your rig, and let it auto-detect a Win7 Backup Image you have stored there. It will reimage your HD flawlessly in 15-20 minutes.

You can choose additional drives/partitions to include in your image, or just reimage the OS drive to regain access to your files on other partitions or HD's. The exception would be if those HD's fail, so the best idea is to back up all of your data along with the System Image to an external HD.

Damsel, you asked me while repping how you can make Win7 backup image when "it won't let me make a backup, it only allows one set and it was a bad one?"

Here I believe you are referring to the manufacturer's Recovery Disk set. If it malfunctions, then the option is to order a new set from your maker's Tech Support.

I was referring, however, to the Win7 backup image which you can make in the Backup Center (type backup in start search box) to save externally. By backing up this image of your Win7 installation, you never have to reinstall again and have the ability to recover by booting the Win7 DVD repair console or Repair CD, selecting "Recover Using an Image" which will auto-detect the stored image on your external drive, in a primary partition on a secondary HD, or using DVD's (never the best choice, as you found out).

Since you didn't have a backup image, your only choice is to try booting the Win7 DVD repair console or Repair CD, seeing if it finds an installation to repair, then run Startup Repair repeatedly to see if it will start.

The investment in an external drive is a good one both for backing up your System Image and your files. Until then, I would make a Recovery partition formatted Primary on (preferably secondary) HD to store the image, which will keep it safe except in case of HD failure.

Thanks for the rep. Hope I've now earned it. :)