How to install a W7 from DVD.iso files

[keristop]

Hi,
I tried to clone my System HDD on a new SSD, and it failed: my HDD has been restored to default system, and the SSD, although having received most of the data, is not bootable (seen by the Bios, but won't boot).
So I'll have to put the SSD Inside the laptop, and install W7 from scratch .




What I have (I don't have any installation CD or DVD) is:

• 6 DVDn.iso files I've generated when I bought the PC (if I correctly remember), totalling 19GB
• a recovery partition in my HDD (18.9GB out of 25GB)
• on the SSD, I have a 200MB EFI partition, but the recovery partition is declared empty, and the C partition is not labelled as containing any boot. I suppose none of this will help.

How can I proceed, once I've swapped my internal HDD with the SSD ?
(sorry, it's in french! Sain = healthy, démarrer = boot, récupération = recovery, o = B)

 

[keristop]

Apparently, I'm not the only one who failed cloning a HD on a SSD using Acronis, here they say that I may be able to restore the recovery partition of the HDD to the SSD if the boot is AHCI (which is the case for me), but they are not really positive about it : Install windows from recovery partition on external drive | Tom's Hardware Forum

 

[SIW2]

What edition are you using. Pro, Home premium, etc?

 

[keristop]

In french they call it "Family", I suppose it would be Home Premium. 64bits for sure.
I suppose you are suggesting I download a brand new generic Windows, but wouldn't it be better to use the Windows that have been delivered with my laptop, which is stored in my recovery partition or in my DVDn.iso files ? I suppose this Windows has been twicked by Asus to be compatible with this laptop, no ?
The other aspect is that if I use a generic iso file, I may have problems to register the system, because of course I don't know at all my W7 license number.

 

[SIW2]

You should have a COA key on a sticker somewhere on the machine.

You can try restoring fom the recovery image, but it may not restore to a different disk easily, you can use your COA key and

Win7_HomePrem_SP1_French_x64.iso

link only available for 24 hours.

 

[Paul Black]

Hi keristop,

The Product Key on a laptop it will either be on a sticker on the bottom, or in the battery compartment. If the sticker is too worn to read, or there isn't one, then you can retrieve it by either using Belarc Advisor or Magic Jelly Bean. Write this Product Key down and keep it in a safe place.

I hope this helps!

 

[SIW2]

Another way is to use this:

HERE

AND HERE

 

[keristop]

Hi keristop,

The Product Key on a laptop it will either be on a sticker on the bottom, or in the battery compartment. If the sticker is too worn to read, or there isn't one, then you can retrieve it by either using Belarc Advisor or Magic Jelly Bean. Write this Product Key down and keep it in a safe place.

I hope this helps!

Hi, thanks, I found the OA sticker Under the laptop with a 25 letters product key.

 

[keristop]

You should have a COA key on a sticker somewhere on the machine.
You can try restoring fom the recovery image, but it may not restore to a different disk easily, you can use your COA key and
Win7_HomePrem_SP1_French_x64.iso
link only available for 24 hours.

Thank you, I'll download this file.
Meanwhile, I'd prefer to try to restore from the recovery image that is on my former HDD. I thought it would be as simple as installing my SSD inside the laptop, booting on my former HDD via usb, and hoping that the system would offer me the choice of restoring a system partition on the SSD... Or alternately, try to boot on the SSD, and since it wouldn't work, the system would offer me to restore a system on it, hopefully giving me the choice of where to find a recovery partition (the one on the SSD being apparently empty)...
It would not be as simple as this ?

 

[SIW2]

There will likely be a large file on your recovery partition called install.wim. It might Factory.wim, or it might be several .swm files. It is often in a folder called "Sources".

It is possible to restore those by using my boot media.

17514x64-v10.iso

In it you will find WinNtsetup.

Suggest you format the SSD first ( there are partition managers in the boot media).



Select Location of Windows Installation files:

Browse to the .wim/.swm file.

Edition:

Select the image from your recovery .wim or .swm in the dropdown.
If there is more than one image, select the biggest one.

Boot Drive is your ESP/System partition


Location of the Installation drive:

The partition you want to install windows onto



Some pics to give you the general idea ( bootsect is not used for efi installation - winntsetup knows that.)




Click Setup.





Accept the defaults and Click OK.

 

[keristop]

There will likely be a large file on your recovery partition called install.wim. It might Factory.wim, or it might be several .swm files. It is often in a folder called "Sources".

It is possible to restore those by using my boot media.

...

Hey thanks, that will probably help me...
But before: here is what happened meanwhile... I (finally) succeeded in generating a repair CD, so I put my SSD inside the laptop, and waited to see what happens... I started the laptop, entered the boot menu (esc esc...), chose the SSD to boot on...

--> AND IT WORKED !!! All that fuss for (almost) nothing !

So the situation is now:

• The SSD is booting correctly using the boot choice menu, and I can see all my data as before (although 50GB are missing somewhere in C
• The SSD cannot boot if I start directly without going in the boot choice menu: as it did before when I tried to boot on the SSD through USB, I see a very short blue screen at one point (20ms long!); by trying that several time, I could read in the first lines : "... for the first time..." I guess there is something to change somewhere to get rid of this problem...
• The other bad point is that the SSD recovery partition is (still) empty: I'll have to find a way to put something in it (I've read somewhere I can copy the content of my HDD recovery partition on it ? I can access the HDD recovery partition, but not the SSD recovery partition, I don't even see it in the explorer...) Maybe WinNtsetup can do that ?

The HDD recovery partition contains: 3 .wim files, the biggest being Driver64.wim (3GB), the others AsKit.wim and AsKit64.wim. The source directory is empty. The biggest files are 5 asus?.SWM about 4GB each, on the root, probably the ones you mentionned.

 

[keristop]

hmm... when I unplug my HDD on usb, Windows can boot on the SSD directly (just tried once)... So it would be related to something I read, like there is a conflict between the 2 disks, because one being the image of the other they share the same ... the same what ?

 

[Megahertz07]

When you clone a disk to another, both C: disk partitions has the same ID.
The boot loader on the Efi Fat32 partition will look for that partition ID. If it finds two disks partitions with same ID, it doesn't know witch one to boot from.
I suspect that you didn't clone it well, as the SSD doesn't have the Recovery partition and it didn't set the ID on the SSD properly.
When it finish cloning it ask to reboot. Did you reboot immediately after the clone?

 

[keristop]

When you clone a disk to another, both disks has the same ID.
The boot loader on the Efi Fat32 partition will look for that partition. If it finds two disks with same ID, it doesn't know witch one to boot from.
I suspect that you didn't clone it well, as the SSD doesn't have the Recovery partition and it didn't set the ID on the SSD properly.
When it finish cloning it ask to reboot. Did you reboot immediately after the clone?

Thanks, that's exactly what happened: at some point, before it was fully finished (it said it remained 2h of copy...) the Acronis cloning sw asked to reboot, which I did, but then the boot got confused and proposed to reinstall Windows, and as we sometimes do, knowing I was doing something stupid, I clicked on yes...
So clearly, something got wrong, but not all is my fault!, the boot should never have proposed to reinstall Windows, especially on the source disk that was perfect !
What is strange also is that the SSD is yet bootable...

The question is then:

• how can I correctly set the Id of the disk (of one of the 2 disks that are identical: the SSD and the HDD, I would like to be able to boot on it also) ?
• Another question is: how do I restore the recovery partition ?

 

[Megahertz07]

- How can I correctly set the Id of the disk (of one of the 2 disks that are identical: the SSD and the HDD, I would like to be able to boot on it also) ?

Detach the HDD leaving on only the SSD.
Boot from a Win 7 installation disk and do a startup repair. It will correct the Disk ID.
To build a boot able USB:
As you have a UEFI BIOS, just extract the Win7 x64 iso (SIW2 gave you the link to download it), rename \sources\ei.cfg to ei.cfg.org and copy the boot folder (attached) to \efi
Boot.zip

- How do I restore the recovery partition ?
First delete the Restore partition that is empty on the SSD.
On the 25G RAW space you have two options.
- Use Acronis to copy the Recovery partition from the HDD to the SSD.
- Do it yourself:
- Create a NTFS partition (Use disk manager) on the RAW space of the SSD and assign a letter to it and name it Recovery.
- Assign a letter to the Recovery partition of the HDD (Use disk manager).
- Copy all files and folders from Recovery partition of the HDD to the Recovery partition of the SSD.
- Remove the drive letters from both Recovery partitions (Use disk manager).

 

[keristop]

Detach the HDD leaving on only the SSD.
Boot from a Win 7 installation disk and do a startup repair. It will correct the Disk ID.

Hmmm so I have to be confident on what the repair will do... I suppose I should first save an image of the disk...
Questions:
- if the only problem is that the SSD and the HDD have the same Id, if I detach the HDD, how the repair will know that there is a pb on the SSD Id ?
- can I use a Repair disk (I have one) instead of an Installation Disk (that I don't have) ? (Well ok I can build a bootable usb key... I probably have an old usb key that I don't use any more)

- How do I restore the recovery partition ?
First delete the Restore partition that is empty on the SSD.
On the 25G RAW space you have two options.
- Use Acronis to copy the Recovery partition from the HDD to the SSD.
- Do it yourself:
- Create a NTFS partition (Use disk manager) on the RAW space of the SSD and assign a letter to it and name it Recovery.
- Assign a letter to the Recovery partition of the HDD (Use disk manager).
- Copy all files and folders from Recovery partition of the HDD to the Recovery partition of the SSD.
- Remove the drive letters from both Recovery partitions (Use disk manager).

Thanks, that's so clear and simple, I'm confused not having been able to find that on the web...

 

[Megahertz07]

On a UEFI disk, the Boot loader is on the Fat32 partition and it will look for a partition ID on the disk that has windows. It will find the ID on the HDD partition, not on the SSD partition that has a different partition ID.
When you do a startup repair with only the SSD attached, it will correct the Boot loader with the SSD partition ID that has windows.
Never had any problems with startup repair but it is always good to have a disk image backup.

 

[stasy]

Another way is to use this:

HERE

AND HERE

I have issue with the install, too. The laptop skips the Win 7 install usb and goes to desktop directly even I set USB as the first boot device

 

[Megahertz07]

Welcome to the Forum Stasy.

Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs. It will help us to help you.

How did you created the Usb with the Win 7 installation files?
Does your computer has a Legacy or UEFI BIOS?

 

[stasy]

Welcome to the Forum Stasy.

Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs. It will help us to help you.

How did you created the Usb with the Win 7 installation files?
Does your computer has a Legacy or UEFI BIOS?

Hardware specs updated.

p.s I am using Windows USB/DVD Download Tool