Solved Replacing HDD

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I am trying to replace a failing hard drive on an older Dell desktop running Windows 7 Home Premium. The problem is it came with the OS pre-installed from Dell and there are no Disks with it. I thought I could use the key from the sticker to download a ISO from Microsoft. However, since the copy of Windows is OEM Microsoft said I have to go thru Dell. I contacted Dell and they said they no longer are allowed by Microsoft to support Windows 7.

I have two questions:

1. Is there any other safe and legal way to get an ISO file?
2. Would it work just as well to use a program to clone the failing drive and if so, what program is best to do that?

I'm also open to any other (better) suggestions. I'm just now studying for my A+ and I don't have a ton of experience so I may be overlooking something obvious or may not be going about this in the best way. Any suggestions/advice would be appreciated.

@calla-neil,

I would make a backup of your drive while still accessible, all full drive backup. replace the hard drive and then restore the backup to the new drive.

The only limitation might be that it creates the same size partition as the original drive. Some backup software may allow you to put the the full backup and expand but I'm not sure anymore. I've been off of a Windows machine for a while. I thought that Windows 7 had the full image backup capability built in.

@ronnie-wong

I should have mentioned in my original post that I have backed up my drive. My problem is that since windows came pre-installed on the computer I don't have a Windows 7 installation disk. How do I restore the backup to the new drive without that?

@calla-neil,

If you do a full image backup, I don't believe you need a Windows 7 ISO. It will just clone the disk and then allow you to relocate that image onto a new drive. Just a quick search this morning and I found this that gives a more thorough walkthrough:

https://www.raymond.cc/blog/create-windows-7-system-image-for-full-backup-and-restoration/

Hey Calla,

This is can be challenging, there are a couple of options that you can use, depending on the condition of the drive.

1- If the drive will boot:

• Try using the Windows Backup and Restore utility

Start> Control Panel > System and Security > Backup and Restore > Create a system image

• On the "Where do you want to save the backup?" Choose "On a hard disk" and point the wizard to the USB drive you plugged in

• Choose the System Reserve (and any other drives you want to include)

• You can then take that image and boot to it via the BIOS/UEFI "one-time" boot menu.

• When you launch the DVD it will be in WinPE/WinRE - Choose System Image and point the recovery environment to the location (drive) of the image and it will start to reimage the new drive.

I hope this helps Calla! Keep us posted!

Ronnie and Wes, Thank you both so much for your suggestions. I will get back to you with the results. Thanks so much for your help!

I created the system image (on a 2TB external hard drive) per the instructions above and also made a system repair disk (on a DVD -R) when I was prompted to do so after making the system image. I then shut down the computer and removed the battery (a correction to my original post I am working on a laptop not a desktop). I then removed the old 750GB hard drive and installed the new 2TB hard drive. I re-installed the battery and restarted the computer, went into BIOS to change the boot order to the usb external hard drive. I got an error message saying something about "No disk that can be used for recovering the system disk can be found". I then tried booting from the repair disk that I made and got an error "non-system disk or disk error". I read something online about someone else having an issue when they had a usb mouse/keyboard plugged in. I unplugged the usb mouse/keyboard and was able to start booting from the repair disk but it only went so far and then I got an error message screen that had BCDEDIT at the top of the screen and ERROR in big red letters in the middle of the screen.

I thought that possibly the repair disk was corrupt so I removed the new hard drive and replace the old drive. I was able to boot from the repair disk so I assume the repair disk isn't the problem.

As I mentioned in my original post, I am a newbie, so please forgive me if I am overlooking something simple or not understanding what you meant. I also understand if this is too difficult (or not appropriate) for this forum.
Thanks again!

@Calla-Neil is there anyway to reproduce the exact error (with message) and then post it. It would help to give us a direction to assist you. Thank you!

@calla-neil said in Replacing HDD:

BCDEDIT at the top of the screen and ERROR in big red letters in the middle of the screen.

Calla,

Good evening, I see that you have been getting some excellent advice from both Ronnie and Wes already, so pardon my jumping in the middle of this, I just thought that I would add the following SPECIFICALLY to address the latest issue you mentioned you were having with the BCDEDIT error.

See if this helps:

Use Bootrec.exe in the Windows RE to troubleshoot startup issues

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/927392/use-bootrec-exe-in-the-windows-re-to-troubleshoot-startup-issues

Cheers.

Adam

Thank you all for the advice. I recreated the two error messages and took a picture of them.
-I have backed up all of my files to an external drive (just in case)
-I have created a system image on a separate external hard drive
-I have made a system repair disk on a DVD using the tool within windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

Senario 1
With the failing hard drive in the laptop- I inserted the system repair disk (DVD) and am able to boot from the Recovery environment. I got to the choose language screen, picked US and selected next. I stopped at the next screen because I don't want recover the system image on the failing drive. I did this just to see if the disk was good. I assume it is since I was able to boot from it.

Senario 2
I replaced the failing hard drive with the new one (failing drive 750GB new drive 2TB)
I attached the external hard drive that has the system image on it and started the computer
I went into BIOS and checked the boot order to check that the external hd was first
When the computer tried to boot I got this message

Senario 3
With the new hard drive still installed
I inserted the system repair disk (DVD) and restarted the computer
I went into BIOS and made sure DVD rom was first in boot order
It seemed to be booting from the disk as it had when I had the failing drive. I said windows is loading files, then a cmd box came up as it did when doing this with old drive installed.

Then instead of bringing up the select language screen as it had when the old drive was installed it went to an error screen.

Since I cannot get to the recovery environment booting from the repair disk with the new hard drive installed should I reinstall the old drive and go through the troubleshooting suggestion Adam mentioned and then make a new system image and a new system repair disk?

Calla,

I would try what @Adam-Gordon said using BOOTREC

try the few parameters:

bootrec /scanOS - looks for Windows installations that are not in that BOOTMGR.EXE does not find listed in the  boot configuration data

bootrec /fixmbr - if using a BIOS/MBR partitioning scheme, this can fix a corruption in the MBR

bootrec /fixboot - if the boot sector gets corrupted with non-standard Windows boot sector data or the boot sector gets corrupted

bootrec /rebuildbcd - in an instance where the entire boot configuration data needs restored from a corrupted state

This a last ditch effort if the "bootrec /rebuildbcd" doesn't fix the issue you can export, delete and rebuild the entire BCD. See below:

bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
c:
cd boot
attrib bcd -s -h -r

The attrib command here with -s/-h/-r parameters remove the system attribute (-s), the hidden attribute (-h) and the read-only attribute (-r)

Then run:

ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
bootrec /RebuildBcd

Please remember that bootrec is a command available with the repair disk or WinRE (Windows Recovery Environment), you cannot run bootrec from the Windows OS native command prompt.

I hope this helps!

I will give that a shot. Thank you Ronnie, Wes and Adam!