Win 7 Installation, worst case scenario

[richc46]

A worst case scenario, would be, while installing 7, a malfunction occurs; Win 7 not fully installed, but Vista is gone. At the same time, my ghost image of Vista is lost; would I still be able to try again with the ugrade disc? I do not have a Vista disc, I purchased from Dell, with Vista installed. All I have is the Dell disc, which would allow me to install Vista, as it was when I received my computer.

 

[Night Hawk]

The Dell recovery disk will simply reformat the primary and see a clean install of Vista placed on that once again. For replacing Vista with 7 you would need to burn the 7 iso to disk or make up a usb key if you lack a dvd burner. From there you would then see a clean install of 7 instead.

With the system crashing in the middle of the replacement upgrade it's likely that the original information was lost if not preserved on a separate partition or drive to start with. The recovery disk will simply nuke that when performing the reformat if left on the single large OS primary the system came with.

The recovery disk for Vista depends on having the hidden recovery partition intact there for all the drivers and prepackaged software options the system came with new. The 7 installer was simply packing up the first Vista preinstall into the Windows.old folder you may have access to now by booting from a live ubuntu or Knoppix disk for backing things up onto an external drive if you have one.

 

[wallyinnc]

There are Vista repair discs available, that may allow you to repair your Vista installation. I have not used it in such case, so plesae do check if it will work for you. I have no idea if it would preserve your settings / files as they were before your problem.

Do not try the link in the blog, it doens't work, scroll down to the post from May 5th, 2008 at 4:12 pm, he posted a good link there.
And yes, that was a nice chunk of bad luck...

 

[Night Hawk]

I would say! But once the 7 installer was involved depending on how far along the installation had proceeded a roll back may not be possible where the startup repair tool will see any results.

 

[wallyinnc]

I would say! But once the 7 installer was involved depending on how far along the installation had proceeded a roll back may not be possible where the startup repair tool will see any results.

I fully agree. As I said, no guarantees

 

[Night Hawk]

That's why I was suggesting booting up from a live distro to see how far along the installation proceeded as well as what could be saved from the drive before a complete wipe by the recovery disk or simply performing a full clean install of 7. The bad news seems to be the most likely while you might be able to rescue something.