Home Forums Reinstalling Win 7 Pro

Hi everyone,

This may be somewhat basic, but here goes:

Our older Windows 7 Pro computers are now in the 18 month to two year age range. My laptop has been acting very buggy recently, intermittently freezing, missing keystrokes, cursor jumping around, and so forth. With numerous problems going on, I thought the operating system was becoming corrupt.

This is an HP laptop, it did not come with a Windows disk, it has a recovery partition on the hard drive, and I did make backup DVDs when it was new.

So I proceeded to reinstall the original factory setup from the recovery partition. This took a while, then it took a while to delete much of the HP add-on garbage. Then the fun really started.

The initial set of Windows 7 updates took several hours, there were well over 100 of these. Then came a Windows 7 Service Pack One update, after this were well over 100 additional updates. Then another wave of updates, then another. The bottom line is, it has taken forever to get through all of these.

Is there any way around this?

I have Windows 7 Service Pack One OE discs that I've used on other computers. If I have to do this again, it probably will quicker and easier to go with Service Pack One, and get the drivers from the HP website. Would there be any problem, if the Windows validation code was issued for the original Windows 7, to install Service Pack One directly?

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks. Gene.

You can add the service pack from anywhere. The restore CD has the key and will match it up with the computer no matter what else you do. To be honest, while it does take a while for the new updates, I don't see why that is a huge deal. Just start the download and have a beer, do another and watch a movie. Do some over night. Now if you had 10 computers then you would do one as above and image it so you wouldn't have to do those.

Can't you download SP1, thus getting all of the previous updates?

SP1 handles many of the updates, but there are many more after.

You can either update it all at once like Bert suggested, or turn on auto-updates to check and install every night at 3am (make sure the machine is not set to go to sleep or anything) and within a night or two the machine will be up to snuff.

Just be careful with web surfing and email until then.

JamesNT

Hi Bert and James,

I don't think I explained this very well.

The computer started with Win7Pro, it was upgraded to SP1 when that was available. For the last few weeks computer has had very unpredictable behavior.

I wanted to perform a new, clean install, wipe the hard drive and start all over again.

All the restore media I have (DVD or hard drive restore sector) restored to factory configuration, which was Win 7 no update.

So it had to go through hours of updates to the original Win7, then the SP1 upgrade, then several more hours of updates.

So going to Win7 SP1, from disks from another computer, would save several hours. IF the validation code would not be a problem. Then I could get drivers from the HP website.

That would also save the time spent deleting the bloatware!

Thanks.

Gene

This is where imaging is useful. We make generic images quarterly here loaded up with all the windows updates. It saves us hours and hours.

Hi Sandeep,

Is this reserved for the "Server club" or can it be done peer-to-peer? Can you suggest a program?

Thanks.

Gene

It can be either way. This is just how we make Windows 7 Installation discs. We give the practices we setup a fully setup image loaded with everything (win updates, amazing charts, etc.) for recovery.

This is why identical hardware is strongly recommended. You can fully set up one of them and distribute the image to the rest. All the drivers should match up. Imaging can be complicated. It's not exactly on the skill list of your everyday IT guy. It's a technique corporations and schools use to deploy hundreds of desktops at a time.

For people who aren't familiar with imaging. Usually they set up the computer they want the first time and then make a backup image (like the HP recovery one) for each computer.

It's pretty nice because you should be able to put the DVD on the server or one computer and image across the network, all at the same time.

The link below covers several open-source tools; the one's I would recommend for Doctor DIY is 1)Redo, or for the more adventuresome 2)Clonezilla.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/open-source/linux-based-disk-cloning-imaging-software/

Remember, start with taking a FULL backup, then pull the in-use drive and install a fresh physical drive until you get the hang of it so that no real data is at risk.

Sandeep,

http://kb.acronis.com/content/2149

Is this something you would use. I know it's more of a Backup/Restore, but it seems like you could use it for cloning with different hardware. Or is it even worth it?

Backup restore is fine, but it really did not address the question. Because you are doing a clean install, you are reverting back to the basics.

You can slipstream the SP1 update into the install program and create a new disk. It's somewhat involved, but would put you that far ahead of the game. I suppose you could add other updates, but at that point, I would just as soon let it run overnight to update the 100 or so updates that come forth. One thing I have done is do the Service pack update before going to general updates, otherwise it will do a ton of updates then later add SP1, and update some more. Many of the initial updates are in SP1.

You could also slipstream other installers in the initial install disk as well.

That's the good thing about 2011 Essentials and WHS, it keeps old copies of your backups so you can go back 6 months and do a restore from 6 months ago and just do those updates. All your programs (that were there 6 months ago) would be intact. Still have to do a lot of updates though.

That is very insightful. Thanks. I do know that Acronis (maybe not that software -- they are the Logitech of backup software) has a program that allows you to take an image file and use it on computers with different hardware setups. May be a different on.

Bert,

We use Acronis in the enterprise services unit, and it is a awesome tool-set for handling P2V, V2V, and dissimilar hardware bare-metal restores.

Their market is more SMB to enterprise, so they aren't often a good for the medical practices we deal with.

I really didn't believe their tools could do what they claimed until I used them in a real data-center hardware upgrade. Impressive stuff.

Agreed. Before Backup Assist, Acronis used to be my backup of choice. Then, as stated above, they fell into the Logitech syndrome. Way too many products AND way too difficult. I bought the corporate version for the SBS server, and it took me days to figure it out. Finally, I just gave up. Too bad. Because I used to always say, it was simple to use, and a rock of an imaging backup system. Now it is just a great imaging system, but it is simply too difficult to set up.

Theoretically, you can image any computer and copy it to another assuming you change the SID in all the right places. Here's a good article about the SID and what it does:
https://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2009/11/03/3291024.aspx?Redirected=true

Summary: Sysprep creates a specialize pass that allows a new SID to be generated at the time of installation on a new computer. Helps avoid any potential conflicts.

You can then use any imaging software of choice to capture your image. MS provides their own tools to capture the image. You can use things like Acronis/Ping/whatever to capture the image. Then there comes the issue of deploying the image. Another area where there's a lot of competitors. Microsoft has their WDS Server. Acronis has Snap Deploy. But you could just as easily capture it to a flash drive or DVD.

This is how all of your major OEMs make their installations/recovery disks.

So here's what I did-

As usual, amateurish and certainly not elegant, but I think it works-

After finally getting the laptop back to full functionality, I bought an SSD and cloned the hard drive to the SSD. Then installed the SSD.

So now I have a MUCH MUCH MUCH faster laptop, and a pulled hard drive that will serve as backup/restore disk.

Thanks for all the replies!

Gene

Glad that worked for you. Now, you have an SSD. Not sure how you did it, but here's one method:

http://www.ssdfreaks.com/content/664/how-to-clone-hdd-to-ssd-with-windows-7s-own-software

Compared to this, your method sounds a bit too easy. We'll wait for Sandeep to weight in on this.

But, either way, you are either all set or you have an SSD you can start over with.

Actually with Macrium Reflect it's even easier. A few clicks and you can migrate your install from the hard drive to the ssd. Or from a small SSD to a larger SSD. It's alignment aware so it adjusts the alignment properly for SSDs during migration. What program did you use to clone the SSD?

Hi Sandeep,

Earlier I had purchased a Crucial SSD bundled with a "Data Transfer Kit" which was a USB to SATA(?) cable and a data transfer CD. The program was EZ Gig IV Cloning Software with Data Select.

Gene

Hi everyone,

I alluded to this above, but I'd like to emphasize it.

After installing the SSD, the speed increase in the laptop it is quite striking. The time it takes to boot and shutdown seems to be about one third what it had been, Amazing Charts is a little faster, Internet and retrieving data over the network is much much faster.

Gene

I have that too. I used it SSD to SSD. Never tried with HDD.

"the speed increase in the laptop it is quite striking"

Cool. But get to the good stuff. How fast does Microsoft Word or Outlook open?

Fast.

Gene

I know. Everyone talks about the reboot. I have gotten 9.2 seconds once. But, the proof is in the performance.

Word used to load and load and load. Now, it is just there. Also the system tray which took like seconds between each icon, now just goes...swoosh....