Repair Install

Hi all,


Great thread and I've learned a lot.

So, I have a 64 bit Home premium retail CD and its newly installed on my PC. I've been BSODING and various other errors have started up, so I want to make sure that its a software error and not hardware.

I have SP1 installed although the Windows CD does NOT have SP1 on it...I tried to repair install with the CD using the Vista SP2 compatibility work around, but I get an installation error 0x80070241.

I recon my CD may be borked or my optical drive is futzed, (possible as some games that did work now have CAB corruptions off the disk...but I digress).

No hassle, I'm downloading the X17-58997 ISO , (Win 7 Home Premium SP1) off Digital river right now.

My question is this: IF this works and I do the repair install with the ISO, when it comes to validating my copy of Windows...will my existing product key work?

I ask because this ISO has SP1 included and my origional, (and probably damaged), disk did not.

I don't really want to end up with a repaired windows that I can't authenticate with my existing key.

Thanks

Ah cool...

Thanks for that.

I'm not very familiar with ISO's like this...I assume I need to burn onto a DVD in order to use it? I'm downloading it onto a seperate external HDD and would like to run it from that as I half suspect that my optical drive may be flakey.

I also assume that I won't have to use the Vista SP2 work around with this ISO as it matches my installation profile with SP1?

It seems I'm going to have go with a scorched earth approach.

Tried running the repaire from an external HDD...install failure, burnt it to a DVD...install failure, copied to my other internal HDD...install failure.

On the bright side at least my windows disk is probably not damaged, although I will now use the SP1 ISO.

Thanks anyway

Not so smooth unfortunately.

The ISO burnt onto DVD gets to 97% then fails, I managed to create a bootable USB, (64 bit) on my old 32 bit system, (good fun that was but learned a lot)...that gets to 55% then fails. It actually BSODS during installation... which was new to me

All this leads me to think that the hard Drive I'm trying to load onto is suspect.

Its a new 128G SSD...anybody had similar experiences with SSD drives?

I think I may just go with trying to install Windows on my 1TB regular drive, see what I can do to salvage the SSD and use that for games.

Its my first time with 64 bit, so I'm not sure what the rules are for installing 32 bit applications outside the default settings and on different physical drives. Maybe its better to have 1 big drive with lots of space, default install all applications and just a few select games on the SSD for speed.

In light of my current situation I don't see many other options.

I might try that, but I've also stumbled onto something interesting.

I failed to load onto my 1TB HDD as well with both USB and DVD...out of frustration I put my original windows 7 in my disk drive, thinking I'd just re-install SP1.

However...my windows CD said that it can't install on either SSD or HDD as they are currently in MBR need to be in GPT?

I have a GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UP4 TH mobo running Gigabyte's 3D BIOS (Dual UEFI).

Could this be the cause?

If this is then I need to create a GPT partition for windows through the cmd.exe which I can access from the USB installation?