Are All Windows 7 System Repair Discs the Same?

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I have several Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit laptops and one Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit desktop in the family. After purchasing each, I dutifully created a System Repair Disc. As my stack of repair discs grew, I started wondering if there’s really any difference between them. Will a 64 bit repair disc work with any 64 bit version of Windows 7 in either a laptop or a desktop, or are they specific to the PC that created them? Same questions for 32 bit repair discs.

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This is the kind of question you might expect all the pros would be able to answer in an instant, yet here you are x days after the post with no reply.

Me too. I daresay I could hunt it down, but this is where you would expect to see an answer.

I don’t know either, and I’m not counting disks – I need to use a valid disk on a computer I’m having trouble with, and I am wondering about how up-to-date it has to be. Service Releases and all that, you know.

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All 64 Bit Repair disks should be the same. Just as all retail Win 7 DVD’s contain all versions of Win 7, just the key unlocks the particular version, the Repair disk holds all the data you need to open the repair console and other basic system features.

Sorry, I did not see this thread prior to this.

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My problem is that when I create a restore disk using CREATE… it creates the disk but then says it’s incompatible (with what it just created)

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Do you have a system with it’s own specific recovery/restoration means?

Dogberry,
Some of us do have lives outside of the lounge. Be patient.

Yes, typically all 64 bit recovery discs will work in any 64 bit version on Windows 7. Same goes for 32 bit. Now OEM systems may factor differently, but based on the Windows 7 genuine OS DVD disk, they should work as above. There may be issue with disks created pre service pack installation, I doubt it but I cannot answer that with any certainty.

The information put into recovery disc creation is the same and is not specific to your machine.

What your job is in all of this is to test and make certain you can get into the recovery console with whatever disk you plan to use.

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What I was trying to do was to be able to boot into safe mode which I cannot do with F8 (I used to be able to but I must’ve done something to the boot scipt). I used BCD and did “something”. My plan was to try to repair my boot installation by using a repair disk; the repair disk loads but gives me an incompatibility message. I know that I can go into the system advanced mode and edit the boot message, but I forgot what the script should be… anyway…. I have even used my original window7 installation CD and got the same incompatibility message.

If disaster struck, I would have to read load Windows 7 from scratch and not be able to repair it with the repair disks.

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Not me, I would just restore my latest Image. Takes me about 10 minutes from the Image. If the Image is new enough I do not have any further restoration to do as my data is safely saved in a separate partition.

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In the 2 or 3 occasions where I tried to use the repair disk, it failed miserably. This means I really do not hold the repair disk in high regard. I admit this is just my personal experience and admit that it can be useful in other circumstances, but what has never failed me, just as with Ted, is my Acronis image backups, coupled with Acronis boot disks. Once I get a new system working, I create an image, which is then updated more or less once a week. It’s the best single safety measure you can have to protect your data and time. Makes the rescue disk almost expendable.

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The only thing I use the Rescue Disk for is to get to the Repair Console, and that’s not very often. I got my Win 7 when it was first released. In all that time I can count on one hand the number of times I have inserted the Repair (Rescue) Disk. And for that matter if you have an installation disk, including one you burned from ISO file with Win 7 on it, you don’t even need the Repair Disk. These same files are on the installation disk.

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I agree that images are better than normal restore. What I found is that Windows 7 backs of all of my hard drives it does not allow me to select just one for imaging.

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This is just one of the reasons I have chosen to use a 3rd party app for Imaging and do not use the Win 7 Backup and Restore app. You get much more control of how and where with the 3rd party apps.

We discuss the various apps in a lot of detail in the Security and Backup Forum

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