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

 

[nelsonw]

Recovery petition

Hi,
Thank you for your advice. You were right. Eventually it did copy to the disk. Thanks again.
nelson

 

[testmans]

Another option the create recovery partition

Fine ... Another option to create HTML-based recovery partition. interested have a look

Page1
Page2

Thanks good share

 

[SIW2]

That would be interesting ...if the script was still available to download.

 

[severedsolo]

What language is that written in?

 

[SIW2]

I think it would be Turkish.

Can you d/l the .zip file from the second page ?

 

[severedsolo]

Nope, just getting a 404 error, was just interested in reading the article.

 

[lrod8]

another way to make the partition bootable after copying the Win7 files over is to open cmd and run this:
Z:
cd /boot
bootsec /nt60 Z:
(Z being your partition letter)
this worked for me, what do you think??

 

[SIW2]

Bootsect isn't necessary if you follow the instructions in the tutorial.

 

[severedsolo]

As an experiment, I just tried it, I got "bootsec is not recognised as a valid command"

 

[SIW2]

It's not needed , and it doesn't add the boot menu entry - not sure what that post was about.

 

[mjf]

As an experiment, I just tried it, I got "bootsec is not recognised as a valid command"

It mat not be needed but it does exist
From the Easybcd "Power Console" /command line type
>bootsect /help
with a t.

In normal Windows 7 usage I think "bootrec" has effectively replaced it as an all in one boot fix tool.

 

[lrod8]

As an experiment, I just tried it, I got "bootsec is not recognised as a valid command"

severedsolo, i apologize, the command is bootsect not bootsec, my fault, here it is again:

Z:
cd /boot
bootsect /nt60 Z:

once you restart it shows on the boot menu as a if it was a second OS, mine showed as Windows 7 [EMS Enabled], i followed the toutorial to change the name of the second OS and renamed it RECOVERY and change the time for the default OS as well. then i selected the RECOVERY and setup started as if it was from a CD.

SIW2 - it is there and it does work. i wouldnt have suggested it if i didnt know it worked

now, if anybody figures out how to add your own "bloatware" to that recovery partition and intall from there, please let me know!!!!

 

[hollyoaks777]

no problem, im thinking of doing a similar one explaining how to get rid of the old Vista recovery Partition and linking to this tutorial to explain how to replace it with a Win 7 one, would anyone be interested in that?

Yes I would love to do that mate

 

[severedsolo]

no problem, im thinking of doing a similar one explaining how to get rid of the old Vista recovery Partition and linking to this tutorial to explain how to replace it with a Win 7 one, would anyone be interested in that?

Yes I would love to do that mate

I will add it in Its gonna be a while though, am currently working on a major rewrite, Lrod88 has shown me how to incorporate your own bloatware into the partition, so I'll bundle that all together in one update.

 

[hollyoaks777]

No problem mate it will be worth the wait

 

[JeremyAlexander]

Thank You

Thank You this worked Great for me and Faster than a dvd to load!!

 

[schnp]

Excellent tutorial. I had no idea it would only take ten minutes.

I booted the recovery partition to test it and my mouse and keyboard aren't recognized. Any ideas about why this would happen and how I can fix it?

 

[Brink]

Hello Schnp, and welcome to Seven Forums.

How are your mouse and keyboard connected to your computer? For example: USB or ps2.

I'm assuming USB since that's the most common these days. If so, boot into your BIOS and double check through all of your BIOS settings to make sure that you have any "USB at boot", "Legacy USB", "USB Mouse/keyboard at boot" type setting enabled.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[schnp]

They're wirelessly connected to a receiver which is connected via USB, of course. My BIOS aren't the standard ones, they're ASUS' custom BIOS so I sometimes struggle finding the comparable options. However, I did find "Legacy USB" and another USB-related option, which are both enabled. Other ideas? I'm not sure if there's a way to boot into the BIOS that are usually stock on PCs.

 

[Brink]

Do you have it connected to a USB port on the back of the computer on the motherboard itself, and not to come USB hub or front case USB port?