I have two laptops, one having Windows-Vista home premium and other one having Windows-7 professional. Both versions of OS are OEM installs(pre-installed when I bought the laptop) and I do not have the Windows Installation disks for them. usually the installation disks provide a repair option in case one needs to repair/rescue a improper windows installation. But since I dont have the installation disks, I want to create rescue disks/startup disks for these.
My questions are :
1] How to create a system rescue disk/startup disk on a CD from these two versions of Windows?
2] Doesn't the system restore points which Vista/Windows-7 create, cannot be created on a CD disk instead of hard-disk?
3] If I have a manual backup of my windows registry, in which I have exported all the registry to a file and I have that file on a CD, how to restore that registry back to the windows installation which might not be booting up properly due to bad registry problem.
EDIT:
4]Is there any way to use these system restore points directly during bootup of the laptop, if windows does cannot boot properly due to problem. First laptop is HP Pavillion dv6646 and second one is Sony VAIO VCPEE series.
thank you.
-AD
Best Answer
1) For some manufacturers (Dell) you can get a tool from them to burn your system restore data to a DVD. For others, you may look into creating a bootable cd using a tool like BartPE, VistaPE, or another generic rescue disk maker. I personally use BartPE, it was quite easy to use.
2) System restore points can't be put onto a disk, from vista on, the computer uses what's called "Shadow Copies" (it doesn't really delete things when you make changes, it just deletes the header, but keeps track of the old file). Since it doesn't actually have a block of old files laying around, there's nothing to move to CD.
3) If you need to import a registry backup into a corrupted install you can use a win7 disk you borrow from someone else, or you can use a rescue disk like BartPE or whatever - they almost univerally have registry editors included.
4) to use restore points from a boot scenario, you need a windows 7 DVD. Once you boot up from the CD, just hit "repair" instead of "install" and then select the option about restore points. I think it's called "roll my system back" or something similar.
Post Script - If you're not able to burn a windows 7 disc from your rescue files on the computer, try calling up their tech support and telling them your partitions got messed up or something similar and so you lost the rescue data. Ask them to mail you a restore DVD, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than sending a tech out, so they'll usually do it.