reinstalling windows 7 on a multiple boot linux box

[francois]

I have striped too much my linux box of the windows installation, I am unable to produce an emergency bootup disk. I am simply looking for a copy of a boot disk for linux windows 7 on my toshiba z930. I would like to reduce the size of the actual windows partition.

Anyone knows about a functional link for a windows 7 bootup cd?

[donald]

Hi francois
I'm not quite sure what exactly you are looking for.
a)a emergency bootup disk to reset your pc to factory default?
http://en.kioskea.net/faq/4811-toshiba- ... -partition
b)or a windows 7 dvd?
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 8486a46ebf
... ....

[francois]

I just want to perform a factory reset.

Thanks for the info.

[brokenman]

Toshiba hasn't shipped windows disks for a long time but they usually have a built in recovery partition. Try holding down 'c' or 'zero' while booting (it may also be a function key F12/11/10) to see if it enters recovery mode. If not then look for a windows 7 torrent and re-install using the same serial number from the sticker on the underside of the machine. Be careful with choosing the torrent. It is an excellent way for someone to insert a backdoor on a machine.

[Obosan]

If you have a partition (ca.13GB) labelled HDDRECOVERY on Z930's HDD, you can do factory reset by holding "0" and power on as brokenman mentioned.

When you bought your Toshiba Z930, have you created USB Recovery Flash Drive or DVD Recovery Disk using the Recovery Media Creator utility?

Porteus has PLOP boot manager so you can choose 1st partition of your hard disk which is hidden one and should be HDDRECOVERY. I hope you will be able to enter into restore mode of your Toshiba PC.

[francois]

In fact, I got rid of the HDDRECOVERY partition. I wanted to have more space for linux. Presently the windows system is on sda2. kde partition manager says there is an unshrinkable partition of 54 gig on which there is only 41 gig of used space. I use the windows partition maybe ten times a year being able to manage my day to day work on linux. I have a backup on an external hdd: WindowsImageBackup. This original backup is 22 gig. As there is no more HDDRECOVERY partition, I need the bootup disk.

Meanwhile I might have found a windows 7 dvd. I will use it to try to boot my backup and as brokenman proposes give the windows product key of the computer.

Thanks to all.

[Ed_P]

Your WindowsImageBackup folder was created by the Windows 7 Backup and Restore function. I do not believe that it can be booted but it can be restored by booting the Windows 7 ~185 MB REPAIR_DISC_WINDOWS_7_64-BIT.iso or the ~143 MB REPAIR_DISC_WINDOWS_7_32-BIT.iso depending on what version of Windows you have.

Once you restore your Windows system I strongly suggest you run Windows Update then back it up again.

[francois]

Hello Ed.

To your knowledge with an image backup will there be an option to restore to factory settings?

[Ed_P]

It will restore whatever the state of the drive was when the image was taken. If the drive was also using System Restore functionality once restored you should be able to go back in time a bit depending on how many Restore Points you have stored in the image. In addition some Windows apps allow for restoring to Default settings thus wiping out user changes. IE's Internet Options Advanced Settings have this option for example.

It may be possible, once you have restored the image, to rerun the Repair Disc and see if it has a clean install or restore to fresh option. I've never tried that so I can't say for certain.

[francois]

Thanks Ed.

I am looking for a factory reset solution or simply a fresh install, to get windows as small as possible.

I don't know if I will be able to reinstall toshiba-windows and think that that does not matter so much if the laptop is functional.

Finally, I have put the hand on a windows 7 installation for another of my laptops. I have inserted the product number for the toshiba laptop as proposed by brokenman. I am temporarily on virtualbox to see how good it is, and also to make sure I will not scrap what is left on the laptop.

However, virtual box win 7 install might be a definitive solution, as this way I might set a huge linux partition for porteus mainly, that could cohabit with another linux system like crunchbang for example.

[Ed_P]

If you do the restore you know that the system will run on the hardware it was installed on. If you install another version it may or may not work without some driver updates.

To make it smaller review the programs installed in the Control Panel and uninstall apps you don't use. Reduce the size of the Swap file, reduce the size of the IE cache. But definitely run Windows Updates and the system's AV updates so the system is safe. Then run Windows Disk Cleanup and the Disk Defragmenter app. Then do another backup.

FWIW My C: drive is 40GB with 14GB free and I haven't minimized anything.