Reinstalling Windows 7 using Recovery Disks

steveh69 · 10 Oct 2015

Here's my situation. Prior to doing my Windows 10 upgrade on my HP Pavillion DVT7 2200 Notebook, I successfully created the 3 Recovery disks. Prior to that I was receiving messages that a hard drive failure is eminent and I should back up my files and replace the hard drive. My Windows 10 upgrade went fine and for most part I'm happy with it. My issue now is my XP Mode is not supported and I have lost a VM that is use run legacy software.

My question is when I run my system recovery is it going to roll me back to where I was before creating the Recovery disks? Will I have to reinstall all my software? I have ordered a replace HDD from HP and it will be arriving on Wednesday. I've thread through many threads of recovering you system with recovery disks and system images. I've never done anything like this before and really appreciate someone giving me a step by step process to follow that at the bare minimum with restore my laptop with Windows 7 after installing my new HDD.

Thanks

NavyLCDR · 10 Oct 2015

What did you use to make the recovery discs? Did you a factory installed program specifically for making factory recovery discs which will usually only allow you to make one set? Or did you use Windows backup?

If you used the factory specific program, then it will take you back to factory fresh with all their crapware installed, but none of your own software/data.

steveh69 · 10 Oct 2015

I used the HP Pavillion Laptop to create the 3 recovery disks

Ztruker · 10 Oct 2015

You will back to the day you purchased the computer. All your data and installed programs will be gone.

If you had created an image backup to an external hard drive using a program like Macrium Reflect Free then restoring that would put you back to where you were when the image was created. This is a much better choice and something you should do in now and in the future.

Pick up a 1Tb external hard drive ($50 to $60) and use Macrium Reflect Free to make a backup of what you have now. If you do go back to Windows 7, make an image backup of that when it's ready too.

As for XP Mode, it's been replaced by Hyper-V. Your existing XP Mode VM can be used by Hyper-V. Read some of the hits returned via Google: convert xp mode to hyper-v

Do that and there will be no need to revert to Windows 7.

steveh69 · 10 Oct 2015

Thanks Rich, I will take your advise and purchase a new external hard drive, I have two of them already but they contain lots of back up data and don't want to risk not having enough space to get the image. The hard drive in the laptop is still alive and I'm hoping it will last long enough to get the image backup created.

steveh69 · 10 Oct 2015

Rich;

I forgot to ask, can Macrium Reflect Free create an image of the Windows 10 system that is still running with all my apps and data? or can that be done right from Windows 10 using the 1TB external drive?

NavyLCDR · 11 Oct 2015

steveh69 said:

Rich;

I forgot to ask, can Macrium Reflect Free create an image of the Windows 10 system that is still running with all my apps and data? or can that be done right from Windows 10 using the 1TB external drive?

Yes to all that.