The luxury of being able to "re-insall windows"

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sram

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 30, 2007
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Hello folks. Why isn't it possible to reinstall windows anymore? Reinstalling or repair install like windows xp called is capable of solving many startup and missing files issues. Vista and 7 doesn't really allow this ! If startup repair tool fails to fix your problems, you are very much screwed. Why did MS made us lose this luxury if may I call it?

I think it was better before. Is there a way for force a windows 7 reinstall over the corrupted one?

Yesterday, my machine just restarted all of the sudden and it won't boot to windows afterwards. Startup repair isn't able to do anything. And I'm now supposed to fix it on my own which is sometimes not very straight forward.

My boot disk is a RAID0 array with two velociraptors. I suspect the array a little.

Any comments are appreciated. Thaaaaaaaaaaaanks.
 
As far as I know, you can reinstall Win7 if you have the disc. You'll lose any data on the drive you're reinstalling to but you can still do it so long as its to the same computer it was on before.
 
What I mean by reinstall is putting new windows files over the old ones. Good ones will just stay there, missing ones will be replaced by new ones. The MBR will be over written, your installed programs will stay there and you won't have to reinstall windows.

Fresh install is possible I know, windows will put your old files in windows.old folder, but that doesn't serve my purpose.

Thanks.
 
Gparted Magice 8.5 didn't recognize my raid array ! It just recognized the velociraptors as single drives ! I think it my array.

Is there a way to rebuild it without losing data? no, right? Sounds like fresh install is the only way to go.
 
Unless you can boot into the OS and do an "upgrade", there's really no other way to do a repair install like you can in XP. Have you tried system restore options from the 7 media? Also check out MSDaRT (ERD) for Windows 7, it might be of some help.
 
Well, there is a "Start-up repair" option under advanced tools when you boot to the 7 DVD. You can also make a copy of this by creating a "System Repair Disc" from the Windows 7 backup center. I believe that also has the startup repair option.

Otherwise, at an elevated cmd line, type SFC /SCANNOW Have a Win 7 DVD in the drive. This can help solve many system file errors.
 
sram said:
What I mean by reinstall is putting new windows files over the old ones. Good ones will just stay there, missing ones will be replaced by new ones. The MBR will be over written, your installed programs will stay there and you won't have to reinstall windows.

Fresh install is possible I know, windows will put your old files in windows.old folder, but that doesn't serve my purpose.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

that is a repair.

If you reinstall, it will move the current Windows install into windows.old.

I haven't seen many Windows 7 pcs being hosed as bad as Windows XP.

Here is some info on the boot up fixes:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

that's about all I can think of other than what has been listed.
 
sram said:
Gparted Magice 8.5 didn't recognize my raid array ! It just recognized the velociraptors as single drives ! I think it my array.

Is there a way to rebuild it without losing data? no, right? Sounds like fresh install is the only way to go.
Click to expand...

I would not re-raid that a raid 0. 0 is useless when one drive dies and you need to place the drive. Raid 0 splits the files between drives. Not worth the "speed" improvement.
 
contitego said:
that is a repair.

If you reinstall, it will move the current Windows install into windows.old.

I haven't seen many Windows 7 pcs being hosed as bad as Windows XP.

Here is some info on the boot up fixes:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

that's about all I can think of other than what has been listed.
Click to expand...

That's what I essentially call a fresh install. It is just fresh install with the ability to not lose your old documents. IE, if you save your docs somewhere and do format the OS partition then load windows in it, it is just the same thing. Repair is totally different.


contitego said:
I would not re-raid that a raid 0. 0 is useless when one drive dies and you need to place the drive. Raid 0 splits the files between drives. Not worth the "speed" improvement.
Click to expand...

Yes, you are right. You are basically defining RAID0, it is off-topic though.
 
Do you want your programs still or just the docs?

A repair in XP use to keep all of the docs, programs, and hardware. The install in Win 7 is a fresh install with moving the old info to the Windows.old. You can get your docs out of it. I would recommend deleting the file at some point afterwards.
 
Windows 7 is NOT windows XP. 7 does not get screwed up like xp. If you are having issues I would eliminate all other possibilities, like drivers and other software, before blaming all your problems on windows 7.

but if you need to -
How to repair windows 7.
 
caniba said:
Windows 7 is NOT windows XP. 7 does not get screwed up like xp. If you are having issues I would eliminate all other possibilities, like drivers and other software, before blaming all your problems on windows 7.

but if you need to -
How to repair windows 7.
Click to expand...

I didn't blame it on 7. I'm just saying the repair install was a good thing to have and I wish they didn't remove it.

It is my RAID array that got screwed. I wonder if this is typical of software RAID. It just goes bad and if you delete the volume then recreate it, it comes back to being fully operational?
 
I think that the repair install became untenable when they decided to make a valid / signed WinSxS mandatory for Vista / 7 x64. Randomly installing old versions of files over new one would just make the system unbootable.

Has checkdisk + sfc not helped you at all?
 
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