Need help rebuilding Win 7 after failed Win 10 crash.

[Law K]

Hi,

I hope someone can help me. My specific question is this:

What is the exact steps to take a corrupted Win 10 machine and reverting it back to Win 7 using the Windowsold.wim data manually in command prompt?

Here are the details:

I recently upgraded my Win 7 Ultimate, 64-bit computer to win 10. After just a few days, the computer crashed. All attempts to repair, restore or go back to Win 7 have failed. Here are the details.

The OS was installed on a Intel SSDSA, 100gb drive. Most of the data is on a separate terabyte drive. Win 10 wanted more space than what was available so I installed another SSD drive and let Win 10 use this drive (more later).

After just a few days, Win 10 did some updates. That's when the SSD drive holding the system files crashed.

I created a windows 10 disk using the media creation tool. Using the Win 10 disk, I went into every advanced repair tool, but was unable to get any positive results.

Going into the command prompt, I used the following commands:

echo list volume | diskpart

The SSD drive is now RAW. Chkdsk does not work as it cannot recognize the drive. The OS cannot be found when using this command:

bcdedit | find /i "OSDEVICE"

sfc /scannow, also does not work.

I tried several other commands they likewise did not work.

I tested the RAM and Cables as well.

Placing the SSD into another Win 10 machine was something I did early. This Win 10 machine said the SSD needed to be formatted.

I have come to the opinion that my SSD drive holding the system files is corrupt beyond repair. There is not much else to try.

I mentioned that I tried to revert back to win 7, but the win 10 repair tools could not find the files to use.

MANUALLY REVERTING BACK TO PREVIOUS WINDOW QUESTION:

As mentioned, Win 10 did not have enough space to install and prompted me to provide it. I installed another SSD hoping Win 10 would install there. Win 10 only placed temp files there.

On this second SSD, I can see the following folder:

$windows.~tmp

In a sub-folder, I see:

Windowsold.wim.

According to what I read, it is possible to use these files to restore my win 7 system files. It is just a matter of renaming and copying them over to a working HD. Everything I read shows how to do it for win versions less than 10. Please see:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/16282-windows-old-folder-restore-into-new-installation.html

Q: What is the exact steps to take a corrupted Win 10 machine and reverting it back to Win 7 using the Windowsold.wim data manually?

Thank you very much.

 

[Saltgrass]

A Win 10 install will use additional drive space to store the archive files it creates during the install. That is probably what you see on the extra SSD.

There is a Windows.old folder and you say a Windowsold.wim which I do not remember seeing. If you decide to go that way a .wim file can be applied to an empty partition. If the one you indicate you have is actual an image of your Windows 7 install you should be able to get that partition back but you may have to create the other critical partitions yourself.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825212.aspx#Deploy

You can also mount a .wim file and access its contents. You may want to put it somewhere safe.

A drive which shows as RAW might be recoverable depending on its exact status. Using something like Partition Wizard bootable version may be able to recover those partitions.

If you had completed the upgrade to Windows 10 and had it activated you should be able to clean install it to a new drive. You would not need to reinstall Win 7.