Windows 7: Repair Install

Sorry, but you are still confused.

You only download the ISO from the first link.

Afterwards, the 2nd link will show you how to create a bootable USB with the ISO that you downloaded from the 1st link. You cannot just copy the ISO to the USB.

Hey Brink, great tutorial, I've been looking for something like this for a while. Is it possible to do this process on an installation that can't be booted to because of driver problems? I have a system that has two hard drive controller drivers for different computers installed (and possibly other driver conflicts as well) that won't boot, and so far I've been unable to either correctly identify or correctly isolate and disable the extra driver(s) that caused the problem. It seems like this would be a good way to quickly correct that issue without having to backup and restore tons of user files, or reinstall all the programs that are installed on it, if it can be done either pre-boot or from a different running OS.

Hello Adam,

Sorry, but a repair install can only be done from within Windows and not at boot.

If you have not already, you might see if you may be able to do a system restore at boot using a restore point (if available) dated before you had this issue to hopefully fix it.

Darn. Thanks, I know I had several restore points on it, but the system restore at boot can't find any. Either they somehow got deleted right before I finally needed one, or there's something preventing it from seeing them. And I have no idea how to actually check if there are any files for restore points on the partition, so I just gave up on that option. Thanks for the clarification!

If you are able to boot into Safe Mode, then you might see if you may have any restore points available.

If not, then you might be able to use either link below to try and recover any data you want from the HDD before possibly having to do a clean reinstall.

Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console

or

Recover Data Like a Forensics Expert Using an Ubuntu Live CD - How-To Geek

Sadly, safe mode won't work either. Although I do have a different OS on a separate partition so I can access all the files on the one that won't boot. Where does it store the files for system restore?

Thanks for the links, I'll keep them in mind if I'm unable to fix it and need a reinstall.

That's even better to have a 2nd OS to access the files from.

Restore points are stored in the System Volume Information directory of the drive that system protection is turned on for. You will not be able to browse to and select a restore point through anything other than System Restore.

If there's ever something you needed in an available restore point, you could use the tutorial below to manually extract files from one though. This will not help with System Restore though.

System Restore Points - Manually Extract Files and Folders

That looks like it would be perfect for manually fixing my problems. But is there any way to get it to mound restore points from a different drive?

If they are not listed in the program, then not that I'm aware of.

can i complete step 4 on a different computer than the one i'm going to use it on?
my laptop isn't working so i have to complete these steps on a different computer.

and after i complete everything, what's this about device drivers?