System Recovery

Windows Vista and Windows 7 replace the Recovery Console troubleshooting tool with the new System Recovery tool (part of WinRE). Typically, you will start the tool by pressing F8 before starting Windows and then choosing Repair Your Computer from the Advanced Boot Options screen. If that choice is not available because the hard disk has failed, you can start the tool by starting from the Windows 7 DVD and then clicking Repair Your Computer (after configuring the language options). This loads a specialized version of Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) and then displays the System Recovery tool. For step-by-step instructions on how to load the System Recovery tools, see the section titled "How to Start the System Recovery Tools" later in this tutorial.

The System Recovery tools provide access to the following tools:

• Startup Repair The Startup Repair tool can solve many common startup problems automatically. Startup Repair performs an exhaustive analysis to diagnose your startup problems, including analyzing boot sectors, the Boot Manager, disk configuration, disk integrity, BCD registry file integrity, system file integrity, registry integrity, boot logs, and event logs. It will then attempt to solve the problem, which may involve repairing configuration files, solving simple disk problems, replacing missing system files, or running System Restore to return the computer to an earlier state. Because Startup Repair performs these tasks automatically, you can solve startup problems much faster than performing the analysis and repair manually.
• System Restore Windows automatically captures system state before installing new applications or drivers. You can later use the System Restore tool to return to this system if you experience problems. Because System Restore is available from the System Recovery tools, you can use System Restore to repair problems that prevent Windows Vista or Windows 7 from booting. Startup Repair can prompt you to initiate a System Restore, so you might never need to access this tool directly.
• System Image Recovery You use this tool to initiate a complete restore of the system hard disk. However, because any files saved since the last backup will be lost, you should use this only as a last resort.
• Windows Memory Diagnostic The Windows Memory Diagnostics tool performs an automated test of the reliability of your computer's memory.
• Command Prompt From the Command Prompt tool, you have access to many standard command-line tools. Some tools will not work properly, however, because Windows Vista is not currently running. For example, because WinRE does not include networking capabilities, network tools will not function correctly. However, several tools in WinRE are useful:
  • BCDEdit.exe for making changes to the BCD registry file
  • Diskpart.exe for viewing and changing disk partitioning
  • Format.exe for formatting partitions
  • Chkdsk.exe for finding and resolving some disk problems (note that Chkdsk cannot add events to the event log when started from System Recovery tools)
  • Notepad.exe for viewing log files or editing configuration files
  • Bootsect.exe (available on the Windows 7 DVD in the \Boot\ folder) for updating the master boot code for hard disk partitions to switch between the Windows 7 Boot Manager and Ntldr, used by Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows
  • Bootrec.exe for manually repairing disk problems if Startup Repair cannot fix them