System Repair Disk

SIW2 said:

If you see the normal desktop apper- then you have booted your regular installation of Windows on the Hard drive.

If you see a blue background with a little window showing startup repair - then you have successfully booted the repair disc.

gogreen said:

Excellent, very useful information and link. Thanks.

Sorry, but I meant boot disk. I'm using a boot disk. It appears to be working, but how do I confirm that the computer did indeed boot from the optical drive?

Is a "repair disk" the same as a "boot disk"?

Thanks again.

For the OP and me
The system repair disk contains the Winre - I thought this was a (very) small subset of the OS in it's own right? Eg. command line tools like bootrec, bcdedit. When you select Drivers you get a version of Windows explorer etc.

Or does it pull in the tools from the Os HDD?

You wouldn't normally have one on your pc.

Some oem machines include an .iso from which the oem repair discs are created.

Mostly they have .wim files.

You will have a .wim file called winre.wim on your windows partition in a hidden folder called Recovery.

That is the main component of the windows recovery disc.

gogreen said:

So what about an .iso file? Where is it? A search for *.iso came up empty.

The System Repair Disc contains a mini-Win 7, technically a Win 7 Recovery Environment which is a modified Win7Re.wim.

Oh yes, before I go further, SIW2 is THE expert on Recovery Environment and PreExecution Environment.

The System Repair Disc will install a mini-Win 7 in a ram disk which it creates and gives the drive letter X:

The System Repair Disc also turns control over to a special program (technically called a shell). You interface with that shell.

ISO files normally contain the necessary programs to be bootable BUT not always. ISO is referring to an international standards organization format. The specific number is ofter left off and one just says ISO.

Your Win 7 can burn an ISO file to a CD. All you have to do is click on it and the DVD/CD burn program will be started and you will be prompted to insert a CD/DVD.

You can also "mount" an ISO on a virtual drive.

Two popular and excellent programs for this are UltraIso and PowerISO. Both have a free version which does have a couple of restrictions but generally not enough to trouble one.

I use UltraIso. Both of these programs have many useful features if you need to examine, extract, create, manipulate an ISO file.

You can also put a bootable ISO file onto a correctly prepared USB stick.

Here's how to put that System Repair Disc on a USB stick.

WIN 7 SYSTEM REPAIR DISC ON A BOOTABLE USB


Putting a Win 7 System Repair Disc on a bootable USB consists of three steps:
1. Create a System Repair Disc
2. Prepare a USB stick
3. Copy the System Repair Disc to the USB

Step 1. Create a System Repair Disc
START | type System Repair | Enter key | Create Disc button

Step 2. Prepare a USB stick
The stick is prepared by running CMD.EXE as an administrator (also known as an elevated command prompt) and then using DiskPart to prepare the USB stick.

Elevated command prompt = Run CMD.EXE as administrator
· WIN key
· Type CMD.EXE (do not hit Enter key)
· In the Programs list, Right-Click on CMD.EXE
· Click on Run as administrator
· YES button

Use DiskPart to prepare the USB Stick
· type DiskPart, Enter key
· type List disk, Enter key
note the numeral of the disk you want to clean
for example purposes, I’ll be using the numeral 2
· type Select disk 2, Enter key
· type Detail disk, Enter key
this info will let you know if you selected correctly
· type Clean ALL, Enter key
your entire disk is being overwritten with zeros.
This can take a considerable amount of time
· type Create Partition Primary, Enter key
This will create a primary partition
· type Format fs=ntfs, Enter key
This formats the partition using the ntfs format.
· type Assign, Enter key
This assigns the next available volume letter to the volume.
· type Active, Enter key
This marks the current partition as active. Verifies that partition is capable of being a bootable partition.
· type EXIT, Enter key
This exits the DiskPart program.
· type EXIT, Enter key
This exits the command shell.

Step 3. Copy the System Repair Disc to the USB stick
Insert the System Repair Disc in the CD/DVD drive.
Using Windows Explorer, copy the entire contents to the USB stick.


You now have a bootable System Repair Disc on a USB stick.