Recover from Windows 7 Crash

Recover from Windows 7 Crash

Jayesh Limaye, Mar 06, 2011 1000 hrs IST

How to create a Windows 7 system image and use it for crash recovery

Windows has gained infamy over the years with the number of times it crashes. While the number of crashes has been drastically reduced with Windows 7, it can still crash at some odd time. When a computer crashes, you usually end up losing precious data and if your work depends on the computer, its inoperable status makes things worse for you. Fortunately, Microsoft has a taken note of this and has bundled along an image creation tool to help you take some measures to salvage your system in such a situation.

Create the image

Ideally, you must create a system image of your Windows 7 when it is working perfectly, preferably after you install it and all the drivers and necessary software. You can easily create a Windows 7 system image in the following way.

Click on Start button and type "backup and restore" (without the quotes) and hit Enter. This launches the Back and Restore utility inside the Control Panel.

Using Backup and Restore, you can create a system repair disc, select a backup to restore files from, recover system settings or your computer and create a system image. We need to click on Create a system image link on the left hand side of the window.

After you click on Create a system image link, the application starts searching for valid locations to save the image. These valid locations include hard drives, optical drives and network locations. At the end of the search, you can choose which location you may wish to save the image to.

Once the locations have been discovered, you can choose one of them. Choosing a hard drive is the best option in our case, because the image of Windows 7 along with installed drivers and software will definitely exceed capacities of optical drives (except if you are planning to burn to something like a dual layer Blu-ray disc). If you plan to choose a network drive, you need a very fast and reliable Internet connection.

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Discussion Board

(10) Comments

Nick

,Mumbai, on Apr 14, 2011 06:48 AM

Thnx 4 the info esp. about the System Repair Disc...

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amit

,cal, on Mar 14, 2011 11:46 PM

whgts ptice

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Adnan

,Delhi, on Mar 07, 2011 10:42 PM

can we install this image in another working Pc?

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Jayesh Limaye

,Techtree, on Mar 08, 2011 09:25 PM

You may, but it is not guaranteed to work on another computer due to different hardware

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shrutesh

,mangalore, on Mar 07, 2011 09:11 PM

Jayesh Ok cool stuff, One question I had to ask you.. please do answer; I am a graphic artist. I use a lot of software, photoshop, illustrator.. Now if i create a recovery image will all these softwares be a part of that image?? So if my win7 crashes then can i restore it back, including all the licence agreements, virus defn etc..

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Jayesh Limaye

,Techtree, on Mar 07, 2011 09:48 PM

yes, indeed every software installed at the time of creating the image will become part of the image and will be available when you restore that image

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Smita

,Pune, on Mar 07, 2011 12:05 PM

What if system does not boot due to virsus attach?

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Sameer

,mumbai, on Mar 07, 2011 12:37 PM

this method is useful even in that case

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Anonymous

,Anonymous, on Mar 06, 2011 05:40 PM

""""This process takes a long time, so you may want to keep it overnight to complete"""" WTF Acronis or Easeus takes hardly 15 mins....