BootMGR is compressed :-(

Infidel

Ok. Better-ish news.

I've managed to get into what I think is the Boot/Bios mode....or at least the Setup Utility.

I'm able to change the boot order and a few other things. Is there anything I should do here? There are basically 7 things listed under boot priority order...including USB Optical Drive, USB Hard Disk Drive and USB Flash Drive (only available when External Device Boot is Enable).

psychic_teabag

You could just try both the vista key and the windows-10 key on the off-chance that they'll let you download the media.

Infidel

psychic_teabag wrote: »

You could just try both the vista key and the windows-10 key on the off-chance that they'll let you download the media.

Where can I try those?

psychic_teabag

Infidel wrote: »

Ok. Better-ish news.

I've managed to get into what I think is the Boot/Bios mode....or at least the Setup Utility.

I'm able to change the boot order and a few other things. Is there anything I should do here? There are basically 7 things listed under boot priority order...including USB Optical Drive, USB Hard Disk Drive and USB Flash Drive (only available when External Device Boot is Enable).

Once you have a bootable flash drive, you'll want to use this to choose USB Flash Drive before the hard disk. And also enable external device boot if necessary.

This look like it contains enough info to create a bootable usb image from the windows 7 media
http://www.intowindows.com/download-bootable-usb-drive-creator-tool-for-windows/

See here for how to download the media
http://www.intowindows.com/legally-download-windows-7-iso-from-microsoft/

(I have no affiliation with intowindows - just came up when I was googling. No idea if you can trust them or anything... And since I don't use windows I can't validate anything they're suggesting.)

Infidel

psychic_teabag wrote: »

Once you have a bootable flash drive, you'll want to use this to choose USB Flash Drive before the hard disk. And also enable external device boot if necessary.

This look like it contains enough info to create a bootable usb image from the windows 7 media
http://www.intowindows.com/download-bootable-usb-drive-creator-tool-for-windows/

See here for how to download the media
http://www.intowindows.com/legally-download-windows-7-iso-from-microsoft/

(I have no affiliation with intowindows - just came up when I was googling. No idea if you can trust them or anything... And since I don't use windows I can't validate anything they're suggesting.)

The link
Download Bootable USB Drive Creator Tool

Brought up a Reported Unwanted Software Page! - get me out of here message on this laptop.

psychic_teabag

Here's another way to recover the product key from the registry.
http://www.prime-expert.com/articles/a10/recover-windows-product-key-from-registry.php
It gives you an emergency boot USB image, which you can use to boot your computer and then read the registry. Then you can paste the binary data into a web page to see the key as plain text. The free demo version can read the hard disk, which should be all you need.

I have absolutely no idea who these people are, or whether their boot image is safe or just a piece of malware. Or if they're just using it to harvest people's product keys to sell.

It's basically a much friendlier way of doing the same as the linux approach. (Or if you do it the linux way, you can use their form to unobfuscate the raw data.)

Infidel

Thanks. But I'm confused.......

I started following one of the links and got as far as this:

1. Download and extract the contents of Bootable USB Drive Creator Tool RAR file to your desktop. You will get one USB Drive Boot Files folder and Drive Creator Tool (exe) file. USB Drive Boot Files folder contains two folders named FreeDOS and MS-DOS, which are required to create a bootable USB.

Then I got stuck at this part...

2. Run the utility, select your USB device, enable Quick Format

I don't know what they mean by utility

Anyway, just to reiterate I have the product key for an old Windows Vista, but the version that was installed on the laptop is actually Windows 7 - but I don't have a product key for that.

I guess the best I can home for is a reformat, right? Of the old Vista or maybe that Linux thingy?

psychic_teabag

Infidel wrote: »

The link
Download Bootable USB Drive Creator Tool

Brought up a Reported Unwanted Software Page! - get me out of here message on this laptop.

Oops. The intowindows site does say there are lots of different ways to do it, and that this was just a way to do it with fewer clicks. You could try writing to them to complain. Or look around the web for other ways to do it.

Perhaps you can borrow the CD drive from the working laptop and use that in the unhappy one.

(One very useful gadget I got a while back was a USB to ATA converter, which lets you connect internal hard disks and cdrom drives and things as USB devices. Of course, you also need old bits of PC lying around to actually make use of it...)

Infidel

psychic_teabag wrote: »

Oops. The intowindows site does say there are lots of different ways to do it, and that this was just a way to do it with fewer clicks. You could try writing to them to complain. Or look around the web for other ways to do it.

Perhaps you can borrow the CD drive from the working laptop and use that in the unhappy one.

(One very useful gadget I got a while back was a USB to ATA converter, which lets you connect internal hard disks and cdrom drives and things as USB devices. Of course, you also need old bits of PC lying around to actually make use of it...)[/QUOTE

I've moved on from that...........I think that was McCafee warning which i 'ignored'


In my desperation...and not knowing what I'm doing I stuck the USB from the working laptop into the unhappy one just to see what would happen.

I've got to the command prompt at least...

x:\ windows\ system 32 > _

I don't know if that's progress or not.

psychic_teabag

Infidel wrote: »

Thanks. But I'm confused.......

I started following one of the links and got as far as this:

1. Download and extract the contents of Bootable USB Drive Creator Tool RAR file to your desktop. You will get one USB Drive Boot Files folder and Drive Creator Tool (exe) file. USB Drive Boot Files folder contains two folders named FreeDOS and MS-DOS, which are required to create a bootable USB.

Then I got stuck at this part...

2. Run the utility, select your USB device, enable Quick Format

I don't know what they mean by utility

I assume they mean the Drive Creator Tool (the exe).

Anyway, just to reiterate I have the product key for an old Windows Vista, but the version that was installed on the laptop is actually Windows 7 - but I don't have a product key for that.

I guess the best I can home for is a reformat, right? Of the old Vista or maybe that Linux thingy?

Right now, the product key is presumed to be sitting in the registry, from when it was originally entered during the windows-7 upgrade.

if you just format the disk, the key is gone forever, and you'll have to buy another copy of windows, or take it as an opportunity to learn linux ;-)

You cannot boot into windows itself to read the registry (since that is the very problem you are trying to fix), but there are various ways to read it, either by physically attaching the disk to another computer, or by booting the laptop from a USB with a different image - could be a windows recovery image, or a live linux image, or an emergency boot image such as the one I came across, which might be based on a pirate windows, or dos, or even linux.


Once you have extracted the product key from the registry, you can use it to download a windows-7 installation image.

Then you have to get around the second issue, which is that you don't have a working cd drive. One option is to figure out how to create a bootable USB stick. Or find a USB CD Rom you can use.