Repair Install

If it's an installation disk, it can. :)

That's great news Mickey. Hopefully the updates won't take to long. :)

Just posting to say thanks for such a rich and detailed tutorial. The repair installation was the only choice after my Windows started acting really weird (SFC would refuse to run, Windows Updates would give me permission errors, I could not install my new printer software, etc) and no system restore could help. Problem appeared to be related with registry permissions all messed up (I don't know how they got that way). As far as I researched permissions problems are hard to be reset to a default state.

Some problems I faced while attempting to perform repair installation and its respective solution (may be of some help to others):

1) Download of Win7 ISO files from DigitalRiver website is very unstable and I ended up burning a corrupted DVD and could not start installation. It took me a while to discover I had a corrupted ISO file. I tried many times with connection constantly dropping. My solution: use a download manager (ISO is about 3 GB);

2) If you have Win7 SP1 installed, you MUST use a Win7 SP1 ISO. Otherwise upgarde process will not continue.

3) After upgrade process finally began, it gave me a message: "Setup can't continue. Restart the computer and restart Setup. When prompted, try getting the latest updates.". This one was a little trickier. Analyzing the setuperr.log I could trace the problem to the registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Components. Permission and Owner flags were all messed up. I had to set owner to 'Administrators' group and later assign 'Administrators' with full access to all keys and subkeys. That did the trick and installation could enumerate all myinstalled programs.

I hope it helps somebody.

Thank you

Hello Shawn I think I am going to have to do this as my Ivy Bridge looks to be in some real strife at the moment. The machine has been slowing down over the last few weeks and this evening is now freezing on boot to the Start Windows screen which I invariably have to hit reset and do the repair (recommend) option to even get the system to get to the main screen - again a very long process.

Now I am getting a message that Windows could not repair itself and as I do not really want to do a clean install or use the image method in case I pull over some nasties I may have picked up am wondering if that would still happen using this tutorial.

I have done sfc and chkdsk /f /r and system restore without any results and doing a SuperAntiSpyware scan that took over four hours to do!! It found a heap of trackers and one Trojan.
I have checked all drivers and other settings such as the BIOS and have nothing out of place.

The other option I thought of doing is running the Kaspersky rescue disk.

I have yet to do a MBAM and ADWCleaner scan and am wondering if SAS took so long how long are those going to take.
So my query is - is this likely to repair whatever Windows cannot repair itself - I know maybe it could be a hardware problem but am hoping it is just the OS gone walkabout.

My real dilemma / horror thought is that it is an Ivy board (Asus P8Z77-V) which if it has been damaged or has gone bad will be nigh impossible to replace if I can find one out here and will cost an absolute fortune if I can find one. Plus that thought is as you might agree not a pleasant prospect

Hello John,

Unfortunately, a repair install will not get rid of any malware or viruses. The safest way to do so is to format and do a clean install.

Ok Shawn I will try the rest of the scans if I can and then just do the clean install.

By the by I meant to mention the machine was making a repetitive noise like a device being plugged in for example a USB stick before it went real bad is that a sign of anything?.

One last query I read your System Image Recovery and am thinking is that an option too?? The only problem with that is the image is on a 500GB external and my C: drive is a 250GB SSD and am not sure if it would work?

ICit2lol said:

Ok Shawn I will try the rest of the scans if I can and then just do the clean install.

By the by I meant to mention the machine was making a repetitive noise like a device being plugged in for example a USB stick before it went real bad is that a sign of anything?.

One last query I read your System Image Recovery and am thinking is that an option too?? The only problem with that is the image is on a 500GB external and my C: drive is a 250GB SSD and am not sure if it would work?

Could be a USB device that doesn't have a driver installed and not being recognized properly. If Device Manager doesn't show an issue with a device, then you could unplug everything from the computer that you can to see if it stops, and connect them back one by one to help narrow down what device it could be.

For a system image, the size that matters is the size of the drive the image was originally created from, and if the drive you are restoring it to is the same or larger size. It doesn't matter how large the drive that you saved the system image on is.

Ok mate I have just asked Wolfgang too about the Macrium images as I took the drive size as being critical because the images are on a 500GB external drive and the SSD I did the images form is 250GB.

I asked him because I thought maybe to avoid doing that clean install I could just use just one of 6 images - making the drive size irrelevant. But I think you have answered what I wanted to know and that is that the 500GB even being larger than the 250GB SSD is going to be ok because all of the images I have are made from that very SSD in the first place.

Sorry to be a nuisance but I am just trying to work around what I have got as the install is a very unattractive proposition.