You can be sure that eventually you are going to suffer from one of the following issues:
An electrical failure A virus infection A fault in your operating system A faulty driver
Any of these can change a system file or setting, which could make your system’s behaviour unstable. For this reason, we need to create backup and repair tools. Backup tools create copies of your system while repair utilities try to fix your system. Since you won’t be backing up every minutes of the time, there might be some changes that are not captured by the last backup, thus it is always important to first attempt to repair the computer. Only when it fails, then you proceed to restore your backup (and lose some of the unsaved changes). We won’t go into the detail of backing up your system since Tanmay has covered how to create a backup system image in Windows 7 in great detail. What we will do is to go through the steps you need to do to create a system repair disc that you can use to repair your system.
Creating A System Repair Disc
Note: The System Repair utility is included in the Windows 7 installer DVD. This tutorial is useful for those who don’t own the installer DVD (the OS is pre-installed in your system) and want to create a separate system repair CD. Before you proceed, insert a blank CD/DVD into your CDROM in order for the system to create a system repair disk. Go to the Start menu and type “repair” (without the quotes) in the search field. Select “Create a System Repair Disk”
You will see the following image. Select Create Disc.
Windows 7 will start to prepare the necessary files.
And proceed to create the disc.
Windows will show you a window asking you to label the disc. Press Close.
How To Use A System Repair CD
To use the system repair CD, you have to boot your system from it. You will have to make sure that your BIOS is configured to boot from the CD. To start your BIOS, use the F2 key or Insert or Del (some motherboards might come with different BIOS hotkey). Once you are in the BIOS menu select the Boot Tab:
These screenshots are from an old BIOS but you should see something similar. Select CD/DVD Drives as first boot device:
Then the CD will start, select Windows Setup and press Enter.
Windows will ask for your keyboard language, press Next when you are done.
In the next step, it will search for Windows Installations:
Windows 7 will then show the findings:
Finally you will find a list of tools:
Startup Repair: This is the first thing to do if your computer won’t start up. Windows 7 will do several check and fixes that can solve the problems. This is done automatically without your interaction. System Restore: If you have installed some new hardware or an application and your computer is not capable of start you can revert your system to a previous state. System Image Recovery If you have done a system image you can revert those files. Windows Memory Diagnostic. This will restart your computer and look for memory problems. More common than you think. Command Prompt: Designed for people that want to do advanced recovery. This will let you do a check of your disk for example, the famous Windows XP command chkdsk.
What other ways do you use to repair your system?
