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    Win 7 Pro x64 startup repair loop

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by alexhawker, Jun 13, 2017.

  1. alexhawker

    alexhawker Spent Gladiator

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    I tried repairing from a Windows 7 install disk, but it's stuck at searching for windows installations.

    Any ideas before I reinstall from scratch?


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    alexhawker, Jun 13, 2017
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  2. hmscott

    hmscott Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    I haven't had this happen for a long time, but I recall going into the cmd prompt and running through the steps to activate the partition and reapply the MBR etc.

    Google found a number of good walk throughs:
    https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&hs=NNJ&q=windows+7+repair+disk+can't+find+operating+system&oq=windows+repair+disk+can't+find&gs_l=serp.1.0.0i22i30k1.9833.15434.0.17249.26.21.5.0.0.0.134.1873.16j5.21.0....0...1.1.64.serp..0.26.1875...0j0i67k1.j6P1U_QMQDM

    https://www.sevenforums.com/install...-repair-menu-doesnt-see-operating-system.html

    https://www.sevenforums.com/general...gr-missing-cant-find-os-recovery-options.html

    Give those a read, and glean what you can for all the options used across a few walk throughs, then give it a shot :)
     
    hmscott, Jun 13, 2017
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  3. alexhawker

    alexhawker Spent Gladiator

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    Thanks! Will give this a shot tomorrow AM when back in the office.


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    alexhawker, Jun 13, 2017
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  4. alexhawker

    alexhawker Spent Gladiator

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    Was only able to break it more, so I gave up and I'm re-imaging from our FOG server; but I appreciate the links (some of which I'd been looking at already yesterday).
     
    alexhawker, Jun 14, 2017
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  5. hmscott

    hmscott Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Darn, yeah sometimes you can't save it. On some corrupt drives even after making it bootable the Windows boot fails, and the repair can't fix it.

    That's why I got in the habit of imaging my boot drive with a tool that lets me boot on a restore CD/DVD/USB + USB image.

    These days I use Macrium Reflect Free.
    https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

    You can make a bootable usb flash drive, and if the image is small enough it can reside on that flash drive, or on an external backup drive.

    I make an image of the raw install, after Windows Updates and initial configuration, and again when I am done installing apps and further tuning. So I can restore back at several stages of the image creation - storage is so cheap these days it's possible to keep many versions.

    After than I make an image backup as needed so I can maintain my configuration without needing to spend alot of time recovering from a boot device issue.

    This effort can seem like a lot of work for a rare situation, but when it does happen (it is Windows afterall) it's so nice to be able to do a quick restore (I use a fast USB 3.0 flash drive) and get back to work :)
     
    hmscott, Jun 14, 2017
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  6. alexhawker

    alexhawker Spent Gladiator

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    Great advice, thanks. I definitely have several images I can restore on my personal notebook, but this was one of ~100 or so workstations at the office.

    Storage IS cheap, but I'd rather slap a generic base image on and then add/remove software as needed rather than store 200-300 specific images for relatively similar machines (especially when all user data is on a file server).

    Thanks again for the help.


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    alexhawker, Jun 15, 2017
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  7. hmscott

    hmscott Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    That's great if you already have image management in place and can pull a pre-configured base image and then overlay the profile of the server to complete the install. I'm glad you had that to fall back on :)
     
    Last edited: Jun 15, 2017
    hmscott, Jun 15, 2017
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