Today I had a rather strange experience with Windows Seven: -

Before I ever powered up my Windows 7 64-bit machine today I remembered that I’d bought a new graphics card and another 4GB DDR2 RAM for it yesterday, so I thought I’d install it all today and get that out of the way.

I’ve set up a temporary guest computer; my old main computer, built on a barebones box, that I had a lot of problems with earlier in the year. – Which prompted me to build my Windows 7 box in April and substitute it for the troublesome box. I was going to give the old box away, or scrap it, but since I found a new PSU that I didn’t think I had, I fitted it to the box of trouble and it’s now working fine.

That left me with 3 computers; and I only really need 2 normally, so I decided that I’d set it up in my bedroom so that I could work on it if I was ever so ill I found it almost impossible to sit at this desk and work again, as I have been once already this year for a single day when I had the mega-cold earlier.

Just before I did so my friend used it from the test-bench one day when she dropped round. I found this rather handy, as I didn’t have to stop what I was doing, give up my swivel-chair, and lose my train of thought, while she worked on one of the comps on my desk. (Yes I have a rather large desk. It has a work-space amidst 2 computers, a VHS video recorder, digi-box, small filing unit, Fergusson stereo tuner unit from the 1970s, my old TV that died last year due to age (I use it as a shelf.), 2 monitors (1 CRT and 1 TFT.), 7 speakers, 2 telephones, a router…) Rather she just switched it on and used it without disturbing me at all. – So it’s still set up on the test bench; but It’ll have to be moved into the bedroom soon as it’s taking up space that I could do otherwise with.

- The point of telling you all this is, before I go totally off track and lose the thread, is that my guest computer needed a graphics card. It had been running the 64MB onboard graphics dealt with by the chipset, and was a bit lame on some applications picture-wise. The plan was to use the existing graphics card from the Windows 7 setup in the guest-box, as it was keeping my base score down to 3.0. It had been used in more machines than I care to remember, and was like the “I need a graphics card…I know; I’ll use…” card. – Which was exactly what happened when I built the Windows 7 box.

There was nothing wrong with it, and it would have stayed in the Windows 7 box had it not pulled the overall performance-score down: When I’m scoring 6.3 with an AMD Phenom processor, 7.1 with the RAM, and 5.7 with the primary hard-drive, it’s a let-down when the nVidia GeForce 6200LE graphics card scores 3.1 for graphics and 3.1 for gaming graphics.

I’d bought a new card with 256 MB dedicated DDR2 onboard, rather than it having to pinch it from system RAM like the old one did. It wasn’t a particularly expensive card, a GeForce 7200GS, and like the old one it had VGA, DVI, and TV outputs. The reason why I chose that card specifically was because it was cheap but better than what I had, and it bore the Gigabyte trademark, as did the motherboard. I thought that was fitting.

To cut a long story short, or should I say to cut an even longer story short, it bumped my base score up to 3.5 after I’d fitted it and got the machine back in action: Scoring 3.5 for gaming graphics and 4.0 for graphics. – It’s not brilliant but it’ll do. The only games I’ve ever played on that box are chess and solitaire anyway since I built it; so no worries.

I fitted the RAM; using up the 2 remaining RAM slots by installing 2 x 2GB DDR2 800MHz. I was a bit peeved that it wasn’t exactly the same manufacturer as the first two sticks I’d installed; but the specs were identical anyway, and it worked well alongside the existing fitted RAM too. – Eventually.

‘Reams of text and not even a single mention of the Windows 7 system recovery disk. Don’t worry; I’m coming to that: -

First, a short commercial break:

I can’t fully explain why or how this happened; but when I powered up I got the message “NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart.” I did, and same message. How could NTLDR vanish from my primary hard-drive while the power was turned off? It beats me; but nevertheless it did, and as a result Windows wouldn’t boot.

So now the question at hand, and the circumstance that led me to start writing this article: -

What do you do if your installation of Windows 7 Beta (Build 7000) and/or Windows 7 RC (Build 7100) won’t start?

Answer: You use a system repair disc.

Where do I get hold of one of those?

Answer: You make one. Here’s how: -

Load a blank writable CD into your DVD-ROM drive. Click Start>Control Panel>Backup and Restore. In the sidebar on the left you’ll see “Create a system repair disk”. Click on it. Select the drive with the blank writable CD in it and click “Create disk”.

Windows 7 writes the disk; it took just over a minute on my system, and tells you how to label it. – That’s all there is to it. Keep this disk safe and undamaged, as it could be very useful later on. If you don’t have one and your Windows 7 system crashes and/or won’t boot then you could have a few nasty problems.

Fortunately I had made one earlier in good girl-guides/Blue Peter fashion; and it saved my system from a reinstall etc: -

Insert the system repair disc into the optical drive on power up and before the BIOS screen appears, select the boot order to boot from CD-ROM. (This can be done by pressing F12 as soon as possible and then selecting CD-ROM in the boot menu that appears with most not-too-ancient motherboards.) You may have to press any key to boot from CD after you select F12 and press enter. Windows takes a while to load files and to boot into repair mode.

Select language, (Default is English (United States) and keyboard input method. (I use United Kingdom for obvious reasons.)

System Recovery scans for Windows 7 installations that are already installed. You then have the option to “Use recovery tools that help fix problems starting Windows, or to “Restore your computer using a system image that you created earlier.” (Using the backup feature.)

I haven’t yet tried the second option; but if you select the first option, you’ll be presented with several system recovery options: -

1) Startup Repair. Automatically fix problems that are preventing Windows from starting. – I ran this twice, and suddenly NTLDR was back and the system booted without a problem.

This is simply amazing. I don’t know exactly what it does; I only know that it works. – Like a miracle-startup-pill.

2) System Restore. Restore Windows to an earlier point in time.

Good thinking Microsoft! System Restore is now available pre-boot.

3) System Image Recovery. Restore your computer using a system image you created earlier. (From backup- again)

More good thinking Microsoft!

4) Windows Memory Diagnostic. Check your computer for memory hardware errors.

Brilliant idea!

5) Command Prompt. Open a command prompt window.

Now why couldn’t they have made the system repair process this user-friendly in the first place?

‘Better late than never. – And this is quite awesome compared to how it used to be.

The only drawback I see is having another disk. What if your system repair disc gets lost or damaged? It won’t hurt to make two I suppose.

I wonder if it’s possible to store the data on a USB device and boot from that? Maybe someone will eventually come up with a hack.

- It’s still not perfect, but it’s vastly more user-friendly than it was with XP.

Finally then: If you’re running Windows 7 and haven’t made a system repair disc; now is the time to do so.

If you have any more information on this matter, or anything you’d like to add, then please do so by commenting. We’re all Windows 7 newbies to some extent right now (May 2009), so the more information at hand the better.

(Remember to use safe computing practices at all times; and if you can, get the 64-bit version of Windows 7 when it RTMs. Let’s lead the world into the 64-bit age. See my previous post.)