Restoring to windows.old without disk?

[JusticePourTous]

I attempted a clean install of windows that didn't achieve anything I wanted it to, and generally I regret it, so I wanted to switch back to my windows.old folder on my hard drive. Following the official instructions on the microsoft website, I hit a problem. Whenever I boot from disk, windows fails to load. It starts the windows 7 animation, but stops pretty much immediately, and is unresponsive until I force a power off and reboot.

The laptop works okay normally, it boots fine and nothing is bricked, but it has a few issues that I've tried and failed to solve, like the function keys only working in select few programs, and I'm missing a lot of my old stuff, and so want to revert. Is there a way to do this easily without booting from disk? And if not, is there a way to fix my boot from disk problem?

My laptop is a Windows 7 Acer 5560. I tried to do the alt-f10 partition reset, but the hotkey does nothing. Tried lots of alternatives to no avail. I think I might have messed with the partition or the bios or something when I did the clean install? I dunno. One website gave me instructions with attempting to boot from the partition without alt-f10, but i couldn't boot from the cd i burned, so it didn't work. All in all I'm a bit frustrated. Any ideas?

Thanks,
JPT

 

[TerryNet]

so I wanted to switch back to my windows.old folder on my hard drive.

You don't "switch back" to that folder; you retrieve data from it.

Whenever I boot from disk, windows fails to load.

Which disk? The hard drive with the newly installed Windows or the installation DVD? Or some other disk?

 

[JusticePourTous]

Sorry, that was really unclear. Trying to boot from the installation DVD.

 

[TerryNet]

Perhaps the installation DVD has become corrupted/damaged. Or maybe the DVD drive has become defective.

Try booting the DVD on another computer (obviously stop short of actually initiating an install).

 

[Lance1]

so I wanted to switch back to my windows.old folder on my hard drive.

How to restore a Windows 7-based computer to a previous Windows installation by using the Windows.old folder [/URL]

 

[valis]

not seeing a link there, Lance1......

 

[TerryNet]

Found this by searching; maybe it's what Lance meant to tell us: How to restore a Windows 7-based computer to a previous Windows installation by using the Windows.old folder.

 

[valis]

pretty sure you got it, Terry.

 

[Lance1]

Fixed! Sorry.. You got it right Terry.

 

[JusticePourTous]

Hey, yeah that's exactly the link I was using, but as you'll see, it requires the Windows 7 disk, which isn't working in my computer.

I tried it in a different laptop and it loaded fine, so the issue is with mine. I get as far as the Windows 7 logo starting to appear before it freezes and hangs indefinitely.

Any ideas?

Edit: Also, I can play DVDs fine while the computer is booted up normally. so I don't think that's the issue.

 

[JusticePourTous]

Bump. Anyone have any ideas?