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Is there a way to "repair" a Windows 7 without starting over?

Sorry guys.  This is a long story but I need to explain it properly to get useful responses.

Two partitions.

"C" Drive - Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit installed around two years ago.  Now very sluggish despite following all the usual obvious steps to speed things up.  I decided to try a little experiment to determine whether the problem was with my computer or with Windows itself.

Last week, I installed a brand new Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit on my "D" Drive.

The biggest problem on the "old" Windows 7 was the Internet taking forever to fire up and then taking a long time to open websites.

This does not happen on the "new" Windows 7.  The Internet fires up within seconds and is generally as fast as I expect it to be.  That eliminates any possible connection issues.

Another problem on the "old" Windows 7 is Windows itself taking its time to start up after it has been selected from the Boot options.

The "new" Windows 7 starts up quickly as though it can barely wait to get going.

The final issue on the "old" Windows 7 is occasional screen shake.  Doesn't happen on the new installation.

You may be asking why I don't simply abandon the old one and use the new one.

The reason is being unable to get my Vivaldi browser set up in the "new" Windows 7 exactly the same as in the old one  with all my bookmark icons running conveniently across the screen.

So is there any way to "refresh" or repair" a Windows 7 without actually re-installing it?

The Windows "Repair Your Computer" facility applies only to Start Up issues

A clean install is always the best option, but there is a way to re-install the operating system that theoretically does not disturb installed applications or data.  It takes just as long.

Start the computer using a Win7 install disk that matches your product type (home, pro, etc.) and bitness (32 or 64).  When it comes to the point where it asks for Custom or Upgrade, choose Upgrade.  It will install the OS completely, but you will need to go through a few hundred updates to get the system back.  Certainly backup your data first.

Before proceeding any further,, I would test the hard drive to ensure that it is not failing.  Provide the model number of the drive (device manager), and I will provide a link to the manufacturer's hard drive tester software.  This is not the same test as chkdsk.  Chkdsk checks the logic of the data stored.  The manufacturer's tester tests the hardware of the drive.

Also, for future reference, do not use logical drives.  Use the entire drive as C alone.  Multiple partitions lead to far more problems than they solve.

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Hi,

You might try cloning your old drive to the new one, or creating an image of it and reloading it to the new one...

Your problem might be the windows installation on the old drive, but it might be the actual drive...

It kind of depends on how much experimenting you want to do...

BTW... Is the new drive the same size or larger than the old ?

Also... there is some type of a DISM command to "Restore Health", but I'm not 100% sure it retains all of the installed software, although I think it does..

I wouldn't mess with something like that without having a backup image first though...

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Cloning a corrupted drive to a new one is a bad practice.  It is likely that the corruption will be accurately copied to the new drive.

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I would agree... if in fact the drive is corrupted...

It could be that the drive is not corrupted, but performing slowly due to failing hardware.. Nothing is lost by trying and see what happens, except maybe a little time...

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Last updated July 12, 2018 Views 76 Applies to: