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Windows 7 Recovery Disc


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I received a tip from Mark over the weekend that NeoSmart had posted their Windows 7 recovery disc ISO images just like they did when Vista was released. These discs are extremely handy to have especially if you didn’t receive any installation media with your new computer, which is a common occurrence when purchasing from a majority of manufacturers including Dell and HP.

Why are these recovery discs useful? They include the most important part of what you can find on the Windows 7 installation disc if you purchase a retail copy of the OS. These recovery discs strip away everything except for the recovery portion, which brings the size down to about 5% of what the normal disc weighs in at. With it you’ll able to do things like restore your computer from a backup, repair the startup, roll back to a System Restore point, run diagnostics, open the command prompt, and more.

I’ve used the Vista Recovery Disc numerous times to fix my own machine when the startup has become corrupt (namely because of installing and uninstalling several different Linux distributions). All I have to do is throw in the CD/DVD, run the Startup Repair, and Windows always manages to diagnose and fix the problem within minutes (example). This is something Microsoft got right in Vista… it’s a recovery tool that shockingly works, and the same functionality has been carried over into Windows 7.

windows 7 recovery disc-1.png

So what do you have to do? Well, you simply download the ISO image below, burn it to a disc, boot your computer with it, and begin the recovery process. Here’s the 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) versions of the recovery tool that I’ve uploaded to MediaFire so that you don’t have to download them through a torrent:

http://www.mediafire.com/?xjyozmnttnn

If you want to download it through a torrent jump on over to NeoSmart where you’ll find the links you need. Thanks again to Mark for the tip!

October 19th, 2009 Written by Ryan
  1. MohanOctober 19, 2009 at 11:07 am

    Ahhh…I wish I had known about the Vista one 3 weeks back, see what happens when you out of the Windows loop for 4+ years. I had to work on my father’s boss’ laptop, but since I didn’t have a Vista disc to restore and he didn’t have the disc that came with the laptop ultimately we choose to install Ubuntu on it as he only uses Firefox. This is good to know, thanks.

    Reply
  2. michaelOctober 20, 2009 at 6:31 pm

    i had a “vista” partition on the drive and no vista software disk with a new pc,this is paid for but they wont let you have one at zoostorm,or from reading any pc manufacturer.its not on just to rely on that partition.
    they send out a recovery disk but thats about it for problems.

    Reply
  3. MarcoMROctober 21, 2009 at 8:05 am

    On my newer laptop i have an hidden recovery partition with OEM Vista. Boot menu and it can be activated.

    I recently installed a fresh “7″ because i hated my Vista experience (7 has only crashed twice in about 2 months, while Vista crashed a lot) but decided to keep that hidden partition untouched.

    I also made some OEM backup recovery dvds when i bought it, but as i decided to install a fresh copy of vista on that moment (XP would work but it had some driver issues) without crapware and bloatware, i installed a clean system.

    I am not much supporter on recovery for an working operating system. Sure its more easy and fast, but there’s nothing more cool than a new fresh copy of windows. Sure it takes a bunch of time tweaking and installing additional software, but as you finish it … brand new fresh look.

    Anyway, for emergency situations i believe recovery mode is awesome, to install an os … not for me.

    Good post, thumbs up.

    Reply
  4. Alec SatinOctober 22, 2009 at 8:24 am

    Thanks for this. Insurance is good to have.

    Reply
  5. AnonymousDecember 9, 2009 at 2:08 am

    Thanks,
    Without unselfish and honest people like you guys us newbies would really be up a creek.

    Reply
  6. taheDecember 10, 2009 at 4:49 pm

    thanks alot was so badly stucked wid startup problem..got solution…

    Reply
  7. AnonymousDecember 26, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    Thanks for this you are a life saver this works a treat and has got my systems backup and running 10/10

    Reply
  8. perry scopeDecember 30, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    hope this works for the wifes new laptop if so a big thankyou

    Reply
  9. tannerJanuary 3, 2010 at 5:33 pm

    I need to recover my win7 RC so i can save some files and load the full version. Will this work for the RC as well?

    Reply
  10. BillJanuary 27, 2010 at 6:47 pm

    The x86 recovery iso file is no longer present.

    Reply
  11. NT04159February 8, 2010 at 4:05 pm

    downloading now, i would advise people to download both 32 and 64-bit and then to burn them to discs, just for a back up if you ever need them again… i deleted linux (ubuntu) and when i tried to restart i get the linux boot and win7 doesnt even load. biggest mistake ever installing linux. hopefully this will work will get back if it does, hopefully thx

    Reply
  12. NT04159February 8, 2010 at 6:21 pm

    thank you so much for this tutorial. i downloaded the 64-bit one off my other laptop burned it using imgburn to a cd-r. switched on my other computer GRUB boot loaded and i put my repair disc in, switched it off then powered back up

    then it came up, boot from cd or dvd press any key….
    then went through the steps.
    selected the command promt and typed exactly bootrec.exe/fixmbr
    then it came up it had finished a second later restarted without the repair disk in and it now works fine without losing any data.

    thankyou for this tutorial and download links 100% genuine. thankyou so much

    Reply