Windows Vista Recovery Disk and Repair Disc Download

2,732 thoughts on “Windows Vista Recovery Disk and Repair Disc Download”

1. Colin, if you’re willing to foot the bill of 2TB of data transfer a month, just let me know.

2. Great stuff. Truly.

   Problem: Vista Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop System Restore was failing. The underlying problem was that Vista would not could not run CHKDSK at boot time. Defrag and other utilities had no effect. All the usual ways of getting a program to run prior to windows bootup failed. Other sundry disk utilities didn’t fix the problem. If you run CHKDSK from an admin command prompt with the /R “read-only” switch you can determine whether there are any bad file system objects. I KNEW I had problems, but just couldnt get CHKDSK to run. Ya with me ? The System Restore issue was a problem on top of a problem. System Restore was actually fine, in a sense.

   I downloaded the VISTA ISO using uTorrent. Burned a CD using Power ISO. That failed because I made a regular data disk rather than to burn the ISO as an image. Sheese. Burned another CD with the correct options in Power ISO.

   Booted laptop with CD in it, pressed F12 a bunch of times and picked “boot from CD/DVD” from the boot menu. But all I got was a blank screen with a “DOS cursor”. Huh ? The keyboard was unresponsive. I suspected that the disk I made was bad or incorrect somehow.

   WTF ?

   I downloaded IMG Burn. Made a CD form the same ISO file, then booted up from that disk. Budda-bing. That worked. On the first or second screen of this “Vista recovery tool” there’s an option to “repair” windows or something like that. I clicked that. And guess what runs ? You guessed it. CHKDSK. After CHKDSK found and fixed errors the repair session asks for a normal reboot. So, hell yah, reboot.

   After a normal boot up I ran system restore, created a new restore point, then told system restore to use that brandy-new restore point. Worked great. Not a hitch. Just one tip. When rebooting after using system restore, please be patient. WAIT like 5 minutes for sys restore to do its stuff.

   thanks folks, you rock
   Fitz from PGH

3. This note is just my 2 cents, and I don’t want to get into a war over the merits or lack thereof of “torrents”. However, I endorse whatever means you see as fiscally and financially prudent to continue to make this disc available – at no charge I might add – to the Vista community at large.

   I have been a long time user of uTorrent: It has been a faithful, dutiful, and reliable means by which to move large volumes of data (video, in particular) over the net. I have never encountered any problems whatsoever with uTorrent, and I have upgraded it faithfully over several years. One point about torrents: They allow for sharing of data (encrypted) over the net with maximized use of bandwidth. They are highly efficient and utilitarian.

   Therefore, I endorse your decision to use uTorrent. If uTorrent offers a cost-effective means to get this disc to the Vista user community, so be it. THIS DISC IS A BLESSING, saved my cookies, and is worth every penny. As a follow-on to my original post, I upgraded my 5 year old license of Acronis True Image to Home 2009. It supports Vista 64-bit, too.

   My backup scenario: (a) run CCLEANER to purge all the ‘junk’ from the hard drive, (b) DEFRAG the hard drive to consolidate the extents and improve performance, (c) create a system restore point, and (d) run Acronis True Image to create an incremental back up of the drive or a full image of it always maintaining (at minimum) 2 backups (in the event one is bad). Having worked in the IBM mainframe arena for 35 years, there is little to be gained by not having a good disaster plan in place to recover your data.

4. Guys, I have to burn the image itself on the CD, or i have to open it using daemon tools or other virtual things, and then burn whats found inside the image on CD.
   I also wanted to know, incase i wanted to use USB flash thingy, does it have to be empty??

   PLEASE ANSWER MY QUESTIONS ASAP, MAKE SURE UR SURE OF WHAT UR SAYING =D.
   THanks

5. Guys, 2 questions, please answer them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

   1-Do i have to burn the image itself on the DVD, or i should first open the image by daemon tools or anything, and then burn whats inside the image on CD or USB flash.

   2-The usb flash thingy should be empty and only containing the recovery stuff if i wanted to use it?

   THANKS PLEASE ANSWER ME!!!

6. Help please, how can i boot from a CD??, boot=restart computer right?

7. hey i have windows vista home premium 64 bit on my hp pavilion i downloaded the cd and burned it on a disc when i insert it on my hp it loads up but when i click repair your computer it gives me an error message saying the recovery disc is not compatible with system your trying to recover and when i also click install windows i still get an error message. i hope there is a way i can download a recovery disc on here for my platform and me not losing all my saved files

8. hey i have windows vista home premium 64 bit edition ,i recently downloaded the windows vista recovery for it and i burned it onto a cd but when i click on repair computer and select my computer and click next it says it is not compatible with recovery disc

9. hey i have windows vista home premium 64 bit edition on a hp pavilion. when i burned the file onto a cd and inserted it in my pc it loaded up fine but when i clik repair computer and i select the computer it gives me an error message saying the recovery disc is not compatible with system im trying to recover

10. Hi, I found http://www.windowsrecoverydisks.com, they told me that they are going t o create a download site shortly for all kinds of windows recovery disks.

11. Will this disk work on emachines pc’s? I have an Emachines W3653.

12. Hey there. Quick question. If I use this will it erase all my files I have saved on my computer right now? Thanks

13. No. They’ll still be there.

14. hm, I did everything the Right way, but after I type in my Product key when installing. It sais that the file does not exist?

    I wonder why.

15. That’s because this isn’t an installer, it’s just the recovery disk.

16. Sure 120 mb are ok for w vistas?

17. when burning the image – gets stuck @ 99% synchronising Cache…

    stuck – light still on dvd, i can hear it spinning just not doing anything? CD drive issue?

18. it’s workin but need it key? how can i get the serial or key?

19. when starting the installation, it said that D:/sources/install.wim is missing help me please!!

20. when starting the vista installation, it said that D:/sources/install.wim is missing help me please!!

21. Thanks a lot. It is really useful.

22. Startup Repair worked for me, got my system back running normal
    Thanks so much, this really helped me tons. I would have lost a lot of valuable information if it had not been for you guys.
    Big Help
    Thanks!

23. My default program to open desktop items got set to media player when my son was on here. Will this help me get back to the original settings?

24. I have Windows Vista on my Toshiba laptop computer. How do I tell whether I need to download the 32-bit version of the System Recovery Disk or the 64-bit version of it?

25. Hello Andrew,

    An easy question here. Start > Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Welcome Center > Show More Details. Skim through the ‘Show More Details’ and you will find your answer to whether your computer is 32 or 64.

26. Hello. I’m wondering if this cd could help me with my problem. My hard drive crashed and I’m getting a new one from Dell, with vista installed on it. What I want to do is to boot from a CD and try to access the bad drive and get the data from it. Do you think this could help? What do you suggest?

27. Hey,
    I really need help. Ok so I just got this Vista 64 from a friend. She says it hasn’t worked for about a year. It turns on and its only got about 15 hours of usage on it. The 1st problem was when i tried to start it up an error message came up saying the NTLDR was missing. I googled this problem for hours and eventually it got me here. i downloaded the torrent of my laptop, put it in the Vista, and it actually worked. So, once my NTLDR problem was fixed it brought me to the installation screen. I thought i was home free, but right after it asked me for my product key this happened…

    “Windows cannot open the required file E:\Sources\Installation.wim. The file does not exist. Make sure all files for installation are available, and restart the installation. Error Code: 0x80070002.”

    I have looked all over the internet for help on this error code, but no luck. I really need this computer to work ASAP. And im not wanting to go spend a fortune on a real Recovery Disk.

    P.S. The friend i got it from does not have the original Installation Disk.

28. Will this work for my Toshiba Windows Vista Home Basic?
    Or the main question I have to ask..
    Does this work with any manufacturer, (Toshiba, DELL, HP, EePC, etc.)?
    Please reply fast :/

    Because my computer is currently in a state where my opens yet the BOOTMSGR is not found.
    Or it specifies the computer’s system, for example

    Intel(R)
    ETC

    [This continues forever…]

    in a black screen, and white font..

    Thanks, in advance

29. Hello, i currently have xp and i was wondering if there is anyway to drop vista on my pc without buying the cd… i’m pretty cheep when it comes to 200 and 300 OS’s!

30. THANK YOU SOOO MUCH. YOU ACTUALLY JUST SAVED MY LIFE.

31. Hi,
    The disk gives me a couple options, but not restore option. The Repair option does not work. Can anyone tell me how to restore the system to an earlier date?
    Thanks.

32. I have downloaded the torrent file and burnt it to a CD,i also verified it using imgburn,When i restart my laptop and boot from the CD it Says “Loading Files” when the loading is completed,it begins to load windows again and then a blue screen apears saying
    :STOP: C000021A{ Fatal System Error}
    The initial session process or system terminated unexpectedly with a status of
    0x00000000 (0xc0000001 0x001003)
    The system has been Shut down.”

    So can any one help me what the problem is?Was the CD not burnt properly ?

33. hi there this is going to seem the stupidest thing to say, but ………..

    im abroad and royally screwed, i need to create a windows recovery disk (i think), i need to get some files of my laptop asap and now when i turn on my lapytop`it says bootmgr compressed and wont restart. But im in a internet cafe, that doesnt seem to have any file sharing programs or even a dvd burner (im pretty much in a third world country) ive seen on peoples blogs that you can create a bootably flash drive, i have a 4gb memeory stick? is this possible. obviously i dont have a windows recovery disk with me. That would have been too easy. Can anyone tell me if im just wasting my time or if its possible to obtain these files on the net and create this

34. I have HP Pavilion dv4 with genuine windows vista home SP2. Recently, I have installed windows 7. When I tried to go back to my original genune vista the recover it doesn’t work.I have D: partition as recovery dive but I don’t have recovery dic. How can I
    recover my previous version OS (vista). I have got windows.old and other related folder of old OS. PLZ HELP !!

35. Hey everyone, well I downloaded it, and burned. So i booted from and its not even a recovery cd. It wants me to install windows again. So whats the point of this then.

36. moises, under the install option on that page, there is a windows repair centre link!!!!!

    anyway i posted amessage yesterday about being completely screwed and needing files of my laptop and getting this bootmng compressed crap. i did all the iso stuff and ran the repair centre. now in one of the menus, it says “the os booted properly when checked” (or words to that effect) but when i go to restart it then still says the boot mgr compressed. does anyone have anyideas? or am i looking at full re formating and re-installing????

37. thank you!
    I do have a vista 64 ultimate system with raid 1. After installing sp1 (KB936330 x64) vista would start only with blue screen (BSOD). the first time i could repair the system with the original vista cd. The second time repair attempts failed (never finished, remained endless in status ‘trying to repair’.

    Desparately i burned your image and tried the restore – and it worked.
    Repair with windows cd seems to be different from this image – glad!.

    Now ik have to figure out why SP1 doesn’t work. Probably some raid-controller driver problem? Does anyone know?

38. hey there guru i downloaded the recovery disc and it boots fine from it but when i try to repair my computer its does not find my operating system to try and repair i have even tried all the command prompt codes in command prompt it tells me they arte not valid commands any advice??

39. I too am having the same problem as Gaurav. I have an HP Pavilion dv6913rs Entertainment Notebook and I thought it would be cool installing Windows 7 over my Windows Vista. I kept my recovery partition but i never created the recovery discs because im stupid lol. Now when i try to run the recovery manager (by pressing F11 at startup) it doesn’t respond to that and just keeps starting Windows 7. Anyways Windows 7 is better then Vista in my opinion but at the moment it still has too many bugs and not very many applications are compatible with it so i want to get my Vista back. Can someone help me figure out how to reinstall my Vista once again?

40. Hi,
    many many many and a thousand thanks for this disk which restored access to the widowed windows partition on my Lenovo X61 tablet. It did not enable the thinkvantage” blue button, but I had just to boot on the diskette supplied by lenovo to restore the boot disk and it’s done.
    THANK YOU AGAIN!
    BTW it does not seem so much official, MS seems to have it “blackouted” on their sites. Too much openness and lean-ness (120MB only??? no user mans on video?? no SW demos???) for our bloatware-producing giant 😉 probably

41. I downloaded disc and seemed to load fine and everything got past the point where it “loaded” everything had a microsoft loading bar, then went to black screen then finally mouse pointer. Now it just sits there? Is there something I am doing wrong, or is there a more serious problem?
    Thank you,
    Lee

42. The link is down?

43. My computer just recently freezed, and when I restarted it said that window files are missing or corrupt. To fix the problem i needed to put in my windows installation disc, but since I received none, I googled and found this site. I was not sure if I had a 32 or 64, so I downloaded both seperetly and burned on 2 cds. I could hear that my computer was reading the cds, but nothing happened. Is there someone that could help me? It would be greatly appreciated.

44. @Viktor Did you boot from your CD?

    BTW, where did you download from? Apparently, the download links on this page is broken..

    -Eric

45. The links are functioning 100%.

46. @Mahmoud Never mind. You’re right. Links are working. The remote port was blocked by my firewall.

    Anyways, I found it on tpb. The discs worked perfectly, but my issue was with GNU Grub rather than with GRLDR.

    Actually just found out about Grub for DOS. I had thought grub was already really great. Now, from what I just read on the wiki site, it seems that it could be even better than the original GNU Grub.
    http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

    -Eric

47. I downloaded the recovery disc .iso and burned the CD last year but finally got around to using it to clean out a Xandros bootloader last night. Like Microsoft, Xandros makes for a pretty easy installation but the uninstall can be a headache, especially since most of their forum support relates to uninstalling from XP which is a different procedure altogether. Anyway, it worked perfectly! Now the laptop is back to being 100% Vista with no other issues.

    Good work! Even for those who already have an original XP installation disc, the disc created here is recommended to be toted around for boot emergencies when on the road.

    Many thanks!

48. Yeah, well my cd seems to work now, although I’m not quite sure if it will work since my computer has been running the automatic repair mode for like 6 hours now. Should I just do the install feature instead?

49. @Viktor: Is all your data backed up to a separate partition or an external hard drive? In those six hours that it’s been taking to repair your system you could have already installed a fresh copy of windows and installed all your programs back on..

    Before you began the repair, the tool noted that it may take several hours to complete.

    If your data is just stored as files and do not need the application to back up your data for you (Quicken, Turbo tax) I would boot into Gparted, mount your windows partition and delete everything except for Users folder, create a new partition in front of that one and install Windows onto the new partition. All your data will be in the old partition still.

    -Eric

50. when I run the bootable disk and begin to reinstall windows, it asks for a product key! can anybody help me?