Using the Vista Recovery Disk

B

bijin

Member
Hello and I'm new here! Last night my laptop (Acer Aspire 2920) running on Vista HomePremium crashed and gave me the blue screen of death after installing Alcohol 120% that was, alas,incompatible with Vista.

After hours in the internet,I chanced upon the downloadable Recovery Disc here in the site. I just downloaded the .torrent and can't actually run uTorrent right now since i'm at school, but I will do once I'm at home already.

Actually,I do have a few questions.
1. When I boot the CD, what will happen? will my laptop be the same as the day i bought it (with no files/ installed software that I installed myself) or will it be the same way before I installed Alcohol 120%?
2. To be able to do this, do I need to create a system restore point? or does windows create one automatically?
3. if i choose a restore point ,let's say, of one week ago, what will happen to the FILES that i saved in my computer during that week? will they remain untouched?
4. this doesnt really concern the vista recovery disc, but i'm just wondering, why laptop manufacturers dont include the vista cd even if we bought it in full price??

thanks!!
 
1)you will start off seeing the normal boot process and start up just as if you were using a full install Vista dvd. But the only thing you will be able to use is the repair tools like you would on an original disk. Those include the option of starting up the system restore feature while booted live from disk in order to roll the system registry back.

2)answered in #1

3)still answered in #1 since the system restore feature will see programs installed after the restore point was created removed just as if you had gone into the Programs+Features and used the uninstall option there. The remaining files and folders on the drive are uneffected.

4)Laptop manufacturers provide the option for system recovery in the bios programming to save on the costs of providing recovery disks. That also makes the recovery process easier for the average pc noob to see the factory condition restored without fuss since all drivers are stored on the recovery partition.
 
thanks for clearing it up.

But I am still wondering, what if I have no restore point created? Is that possible? Or is automatically generated everytime I install a new software??
 
Most major software out there will automatically create a restore point durning thier installation, but it is still good practice to manually create restore points just in case.
 
While having created several manually I've probably only used the system restore feature in Vista once or twice since it's been out. Even when seeing MS updates go on you'll notice the "now creating restore point" notification. If you are not dual booting with XP, 2000 you wouldn't be worried about restore points not being there until the next calendar month when new ones replace the old.
 
The restore points get removed on a fifo basis, as you run out of free space on the Vista partition. There might only be a few hours worth if you've been busy applying software and you have a minimal size (25Gb) Vista partition like me, or there could be several months worth if you have an unpartitioned 750Gb disk with a lone C:\ partition containing Vista and all your other stuff.
 
Restore points wouldn't be saved on any unpartitioned, unformatted drive space to start with. When assigning any other drive besides C you are selecting what Windows sees as a logical drive.
 
Sorry PCeye, I didn't mean unpartitioned in the sense of "unformatted". I meant it in the sense of "undivided" i.e one BIG partition of 750 Gb
 
When you are working with a large capacity drive you have a mountain of free drive space available to start with. Now try that with a typical 250gb drive loaded with programs to see what you end up with there.

In comparison as I mentioned earlier I have only used the restore feature in Vista a few times when first getting to know the version itself shortly after the finished version was out. But on the few occasions the one thing noticed was not seeing any before let's say 3/1/2007 when going to use one in late March. In XP that saw more use there when the older version was the primary OS since Vista has turned out to be a more stable version overall.
 
hey there^^

I was actually wondering the same as bijin.
But I'm completely clueless to what i should do with the CD.
Most of the terms I've seen, I don't understand.

Anyway could you tell me step for step what I should do?
I've tried booting it before, but I don't know If i was doing the right thing.

I've started my laptop and pressed F12. It said press F12 to change boot device at the bottom of the screen, so I pressed that seeing the word boot, i thought maybe i need to be there.

So then I come at the Boot Menu
I have 3 options:

1. IDEO: Hitachi HTS541680J9SA00-(S
3. CD/DVD: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T2ON-(
4. PCI LAN: Network Boot

I don't know why number 3 is missing:huh:

So I choose number 3 seeing the word CD and think maybe that is the right option.

It says Operating System not found. Above this are some other lines.

I shut it back off.

So please could you help me? I didn't want to create another thread seeing I almost have to save Question. I have a ACER Extensa 5220, just 1 year old.

greetz A very desperate Bee.:ldown:
 
Hi Bee, welcome to NST.
Did you have the recovery CD in the tray when you selected the "boot from cd" option ?
The instructions for using the recovery CD are in the wiki
If it was in the tray, and you didn't see the screen as shown in the above link, make sure you followed the instructions on how to burn an ISO image from here and here
 
Last edited:
Yes the cd was in the tray.

And nothing happened after i pressed enter. It only says Operating System not found. and then it goes back to the screen saying the laptop wasn't shut down properly.

I tried burning it with ImgBurn, but it didn't work so i used NTI CD&DVD-Maker.

I was looking around the site and found this http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2819&highlight=torrent+rar

I think I might have the same problem, but I don't know how to fix it if the computer recognizes it as a RAR file:huh:.

And if that's not the case then I don't know what it is.:ldown:
 
Go into folder options and make sure the "hide extensions for known filetypes" is unticked.
Then when you're sure you can see the whole filename of the torrent you downloaded, rename it to .iso from .rar if that's the problem, then use imgburn to burn it according to the instructions in the link.
While you've got the .iso file right-click it, select "open with", then "choose default program"
On the next page untick "always use this program" if it's associated with WinRAR.
 
I changed the folder options and tried to burn it again in ImgBurn, but the same happened as last time.

screeny.jpg


I didn't need to change the file name because it was already named with iso.

Vista_Recovery_Disc.iso
NTI iso file

That's the file I have.
 
I would download a fresh copy of both the iso image and ImgBurn as well since that may have seen a bad install. You could be seeing a problem with the blank media you are using there.
 
Sorry Bee, I thought I posted a reply about 6 hours ago, but it's not here, so I'm not sure what happened (forgot to hit post ? or closed the wrong tab perhaps)
Anyway, what I said echoes PCeye.
The ISO downloads here are known definitely to burn properly with Imgburn, so I suspect you've got a faulty torrent download. Try running utorrent again and see if a fresh copy works.
 
Here I simply clicked the link and saw the iso image download without the need for any other torrent using IE. The burn worked the first time suggesting a fresh copy or a different brand of blank cd-r disk would be needed.

The error seen there however seems to point at a Windows related problem where a reinstall of the ImgBurn program or something else is the cause. To show how easy it is to download I just now selected a folder for the torrect provided to start the download again.



Once the torrent starts the 120.5mb iso downloads fast to the folder you select to receive it.
 
:grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning:

The CD is working now! I did what you said and downloaded both again. I also bought new CD´s and It burnt the CD with ImgBurn.

Now it´s busy repairing. I hope It´ll work after that.

I´m already incredible happy.


Thank you so much for all your help:smile:
 
Can not see the cd/dvd drive

I have been reading the posts.I was wondering if you can load Windows Vista directly from an ISO image as whatever virus I have has altered my registry in the Administrators section to not allow me use of my cd drive.I can not use the recovery disc whatsoever.If I plug in an external drive I still can not use the recovery disk.When I log into the Administrators account it is almost inoperable.The other account is fine to use but will not allow me to reformat the drive unless I am Administrator.Microsoft told me to check the registry entries and i did it.However the upper and lower case values it said to remove were not present in the other users account.I can not access the Administrators account registry.Do you have any suggestions as to how to fix this issue?Thank you.
 
Hi schurr, welcome to NST.
A corrupt registry can't stop you booting from your CD-ROM. The registry is part of the OS. The boot process precedes that.
On the 1st spash screen you see on power up should be an instruction on how to enter the BIOS setup (hit "del" on my ASUS mobo). Use that option, navigate to the boot section and set CD before HDD in the boot sequence.
You should then be able to boot our recovery disk, (though you can't use it to reinstall Vista, just repair a broken boot. It contains no installation files)
 
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