Are you stuck with a blue screen that goes off in 2 seconds and you aren't able to read the error?
Press F8 and disable auto-restart after startup failure. This will make sure that your blue screen stays on.
You could follow the below steps to clean install windows 7 ( or other versions) and at the same time recover your precious data before you install a fresh window version.
Please note this is especially for those people who hasnt got their CD/DVD Drive working or using a netbook which doesnt come with a DVD drive. But others can use this too who hasn't got windows 7 installation cd.
You can easily recover data and install fresh version of windows 7 by following these steps:
1. You are facing windows start up failure. Error code could vary and would be something like this
0x000000f4.
2. You would first need to backup your precious data:
download ubuntu 12.10 torrent iso from http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/alternative-downloads
if you are confused which one to download go with this : ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent
3. Once you have downloaded the ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent to your windows, you would need a torrent client such as Utorrent(which if you dont have you can download it).
4. double click on ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent file and it will automatically queue your torrent in the torrent client.
5. Let it download and once its done you can create an iso.
Please follow the steps provided in the following link to create a copy of ubuntu on your flash drive.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows
6. Once your ubuntu iso usb is ready, insert it into the affected laptop/pc and make sure when you start your
laptop you immediately enter the bios mode to make changes to the boot device priority.
To enter bios press f2 repeatedly as soon as the system starts, Once you are in BIOS go to the boot and
bring your USB HDD to position 1/priority 1 so that the next time your system boots, it boots from your
USB.
7. Once this is done, system should boot from your USB and ubuntu will come up in sometime. Click on try
ubuntu as you do not want to install it.
8. Once you click on it, it will bring up the home screen and you can navigate to your repective drives to
extract the data you needed.
9. Once you have transferred the required data to an external drive, you can shut down ubuntu from top right
corner.
10.Now you have your data.
11.Next step would be to install a fresh windows 7.
12.To do that you would need an ISO image of windows 7 which should be around 3GB.
13.You can google for a torrent ( I prefer torrents for downloading large files). Once you have it
downloaded from your torrent client, you have your iso file now.
14.Now download microsoft windows 7 usb/dvd download tool from
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool
15.Follow the steps mentioned in the above link to create a copy on a usb flash drive (use a different 4gb
flash drive not the one which you used for ubuntu) ... if you dont have another then you can format this
one and use it.
16.This tool will create the windows7 USB flash drive for you.
17.You can now insert it into your affected machine and start it.
Remember that system is set to boot from USB as we set it while trying ubuntu.
18.It will automatically start the installation.. At partition screen, format all the drives (as you took the
backup) and proceed with the installation.
19.As soon as its done and it says it needs to restart the system. Wait for it to shut down the system, you
can now take out the usb drive and set the bios to boot from harddisk.(Remember f2 and then
navigation to boot).
Please note you have to do this before windows restarts again. so make sure you have taken out the
USB and you have pressed f2 to enter the BIOS. Otherwise it will repeat the above steps again of
loading windows files and then proceeding to partition etc etc.
20.Once you have changed the boot priority, the system will automatically install the windows and here you
are with a fresh clean windows 7.
You can install any windows version in the similar manner.
