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Hello I had my Windows 7 DVD with me, and I had earlier copied all the files from it and dumped them into a folder on my computer's hard disk. Now I want to burn a bootable DVD from this dump, how can I do that?

Can somebody help in creating a bootable DVD to troubleshoot a problem on my Windows 7 system. I went on a vacation earlier and lost my original Windows 7 OS DVD, now I only have the dump.

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4 Answers

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You will not be able to proceed easily as you will not have a copy of the system files required to make a disk bootable.

What I would personally recommend you do, and what I would do in that situation:

  1. Copy all the files you do have to a blank DVD and/or USB stick (I would do USB).

  2. Burn a Windows Vista or Windows 7 System Repair disk - Available in Backup and Restore

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Then, boot up using the System Repair disk, at the options, choose Command Prompt. Navigate to the USB stick or DVD drive and run <drive>:\sources\setup.exe.

Setup runs much faster from a USB stick and I think this method is the easiest / best way for you.

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Hello Wil, the problem is, my windows 7 instance is not running at all. It gives me an error which says winload.exe file isn't available and I need to put in my windows installation disc in :( – macha Feb 27 '11 at 21:29
It is quite a long way round, but it should still work and be legal - I would recommend getting a trial of Windows 7 - technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/cc442495 and then performing step 2... The disk may install a trial version of Windows, but it is the fully working Windows PE you care about - It will let you run setup from another disk or USB stick or you may have luck running the recovery tools from it just repairing your installation. – William Hilsum Feb 27 '11 at 21:40
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If you didn't copy the boot sector then you will not be able to make a bootable DVD with just the files off the disc.

I would recommend downloading an ISO of your Windows 7 DVD from the internet. They're available online, or you can torrent your version. There's no problem doing this, since you have a license for Windows.

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Sorry taspeotis, appears the both our sites links are the same. – Moab Feb 27 '11 at 22:54
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Download a copy of W7 here, use it to do the repair, be sure to select the correct version and bit level

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2010/04/28/download-windows-7-iso-official-32-bit-and-64-bit-direct-download-links/

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Assuming you have another working computer you should be able to use RTSe7en Lite to create a bootable disk from the source you have and repair the install from there. I've not tried this though.

Moab's suggestion is guaranteed to work.

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