Create a Recovery Disc

How to Create a Vista Recovery Disc​

   Information

This will show you how to download or create a Recovery Disc for both the 32 bit and 64 bit Vista.

   Note

The Recovery Disc created here does not install Vista. It is also not like the OEM Vista recovery DVD that comes with most store bought computers created from the factory recovery partition. Instead it is used only to boot from to repair your already installed Vista. See the example below for the options available from the recovery disc when booted from.

   Tip

This can be useful if you only have a OEM Vista recovery DVD or partition and would like to have a dvd to boot from to repair your Vista instead of reinstalling it. Plus, the recovery disk files are small enough to fit on a CD if you do not want to or can use a DVD.

EXAMPLE: System Recovery Options screen
NOTE: Using the Recovery Disc you create below, you can boot to the System Recovery Options screen below.

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Here's How:

STEP ONE

Replace the recdisc.exe file

   Note

If you have SP1 or SP2 installed, then you will need to replace the recdisc.exe file installed by SP1/SP2 with a non-SP retail version below instead for the 32 bit or 64 bit version of Vista that you have installed.

   Note

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To see what 32-bit or 64-bit version of Vista you have, open the Control Panel (Classic View) and click the System icon, or right click Computer in the Start Menu and click Properties. You will see the bit version under the System type section.​

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If you ever run the sfc /scannow command, then it will restore the old original non-working copy of the recdisc.exe file, and you would have to do this STEP ONE section again to be able to create a Vista Recovery Disc.​

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1. If You Have 32 bit (x86) Vista Installed​

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A) Click on the Download button below to download the recdisc_x86.zip file.​

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B) Go to step 3.​

2. If You Have 64 bit (x64) Vista Installed​

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A) Click on the Download button below to download the recdisc_x64.zip file.​

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3. Save the ZIP file to your desktop.​

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4. Right click on the ZIP file (on desktop), and click on Open.​

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5. If prompted by UAC, then click on Allow.​

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6. Extract (drag and drop) the recdisc.exe file to the desktop.​

NOTE: You can delete the ZIP file (on desktop) when done if you like afterwards.​

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7. Right click on the extracted recdisc.exe file, click on Properties, General tab, the Unblock button, and on OK.​

NOTE: If you do not have a Unblock button under the General tab, then the shortcut is already unblocked and you can continue on to step 8.​

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8. In Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Windows\System32\recdisc.exe. (See screenshot below)​

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9. Take ownership of and set permissions to Allow your user account Full Control of the recdisc.exe file at the location in step 8.​

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10. Right click on the extracted recdisc.exe file on the desktop from step 6, and click on Cut.​

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11. Go back to the C:\Windows\System32\recdisc.exe window and right click on a empty area and click on Paste. (See screenshot below step 13)​

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12. Click on Copy and Replace and Continue.​

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13. Right click on recdisc.exe, and click on Send To and Desktop (create shortcut).​

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14. Move the shortcut to where you like for easy use.​

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STEP TWO

Creating a Recovery Disc

15. Double click on the recdisc.exe shortcut on your desktop created from above to run the program.​

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16. Select your DVD drive, and click on create disc. (See screenshot below.​

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17. Insert your retail Vista installation DVD into the CD/DVD drive, and click on Continue. (See screenshot below)​

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18. You will now see this. (See screenshot below)​

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19. After a little bit, it will ask you to replace the Vista installation DVD with a blank CD or DVD.​

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A) Insert a blank CD or DVD into your CD/DVD drive and click on OK. (See screenshot below)​

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20. When it is finished, click on Close for both windows. (See screenshots below)​

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21. Now you can boot from this Recovery Disc to go to the System Recovery Options screen in the example above.​

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That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How To Perform a Repair Installation For Vista
• How to Do a Startup Repair in Vista
• How to Do a System Restore in Vista
• How to Restore the Complete Computer from a Complete Backup and Restore Image in Vista
• How to Use the Memory Diagnostics Tool in Vista
• List of Commands for Vista and How to Use Them
• How to Create a Vista SP1 Slipstream Installation DVD
• How to Create a Bootable USB Flash Thumb Drive to Install Vista
• How to Do a Custom Installation of Vista

 

[avol2]

Yeah, unfortanently it can sometimes take awhile to finish when there is a lot to repair.

Well I am at work now.. BUT the computer was still doing the same thing today as it was last night.... so i just left it be....

 

[Brink]

Julie,

That is a bit long. It may be beyond repair and a clean reinstall of Vista will need to be done.

Sorry,
Shawn

 

[avol2]

Julie,

That is a bit long. It may be beyond repair and a clean reinstall of Vista will need to be done.

Sorry,
Shawn

and a stupid question.. is that something I can do without the disks? or do I have to send it back to HP??

 

[Brink]

You should be able to boot into the HP Recovery Manager to restore your computer back to a blank original state. This link will show you how to. It will be under:

Recover the PC to the original operating condition

HP Notebook PCs -  Using HP Backup and Recovery Manager 

Shawn

 

[sidney1st]

Here is a way to use the recovery tools from an USB key drive.
Why?
Some laptops don't have a cd/dvd reader and when you travel a lot, i think that having USB key drives instead of CDs is more convenient.

Anyway, here is how to use the recovery tools from an USB key drive.

Requires: Possibility to boot from an USB device. (BIOS)
A 256 MB (min) USB key drive.

1/ Format your USB key in FAT32.
2/ Go to the disk management console: Click Start, in the search bar type in: diskmgmt.msc then press Enter.
2/ Make sure that your USB key is shown as in the picture. (primary partition and Active)

To make it Active, select your USB key, right click and in the context menu press on Mark partition as active
In the properties, name your key as you wish.
Close the console.

Now open Windows explorer and depending of the option you had choosen to create your recovery disc, you have either to extract the files from the ISO downloaded to a folder and then copy the content of this folder to your USB key drive, or to copy all files from your recovery CD directly to your USB key drive.

When it is done, reboot, do not forget to modify the bios so you can boot from an USB device and you should be able to start using your recovery tools.

Hope it helps.

 

[avol2]

Well I was able to access the drive and the kids' files, bu even when doing the dir /x and getting the name of the directory d:/users/mom&da~1 will not be recognized.. looks like I will have to order the recovery cd's since I cant get the hp or the vista to work... ugh..... Thanks for all your help.

 

[mminos]

Dear Shawn,

A friend of mine has a computer with Vista, 32 bits, without SP1, installed as an OEM.
It worked for one year and suddenly he can't operate it anymore, I mean :
- at computer start, a first screen shows : DEL : Enter Setup ; F12 : Boot menu
- then a second screen where it is explained that Vista cannot be opened for various reasons and proposing the following choices (translation from French) : Preset Mode; Mode without failure; Command prompt; Last configuration performed; Start Windows normally; the last one is preset and can't be changed.
- after 20 seconds and something the screen disappears and the computer restarts again according to the same process.

I have created for him a "Vista Recovery Disk" according to Option One.

We tried to operate twice:
- first, at the computer start, the recovery disk in the drive, we pressed the F8 key and got a screen proposing XP Professional (sic) as the OS only choice; by pressing F8 again as required, we came back at the screen described above;
- second, at the computer start, the recovery disk in the drive, we pressed the F12 key and got a screen with boot devices choices : Removable; Hard Disk; CD Rom; Legacy LAN; our choice of CD Rom device was acknowledged and we got the following messages successively : Verifying DMI Pool Data - Update success - Boot from CD - Press any key; once the key pressed we got the same screen described above.

Could you help please ?
Sorry for the long story.
Regards.
mminos

 

[Brink]

Hi MMinos,

What option are you trying to perform with the Recovery Disc?

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/91467-startup-repair.html

Check to make sure that the BIOS is set to have the CD/DVD listed first in the boot order, then the hard drive Vista is installed on.

Do you have a restore option from the recovery manager type program from Dell using the boot options from the Recovery Partition?

Hope this helps for now,
Shawn

 

[mminos]

Hi MMinos,

What option are you trying to perform with the Recovery Disc?

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/91467-startup-repair.html

Check to make sure that the BIOS is set to have the CD/DVD listed first in the boot order, then the hard drive Vista is installed on.

Do you have a restore option from the recovery manager type program from Dell using the boot options from the Recovery Partition?

Hope this helps for now,
Shawn

Hi Shawn !

Thank you for your message.

Following your recommandation, I went to the "Start Up - repair" page and by reading carefully, word by word, the process, I found my error : I did not restart the computer after inserting the Recovery Disc.

By doing so, then pressing the F12 key just after the computer start to direct the boot to the CD/DVD drive, I went successfully through the described steps in the page.

I had to restart the repair process three times until to reach the Windows Vista welcome page at last. By reading the process report, I understood it was the disk sector where the boot code is stored that was damaged.

Shawn, my friend thank you very much, as I do, for your help !
Best regards.
mminos

 

[Brink]

Your welcome MMinos. I'm happy to hear that you got it all sorted out and fixed now. Thank you for the feedback.

Shawn

 

[muinuddin]

Thank you for this information. I have a blue screen and cannot get the vista OEM disc to go beyond it, either to restore to an earlier point or to restore a whole image.

I am hoping this disk might work-- the blue screen says it may be from hardware installation but have not added anything. The only added program recently is Omnipage which did act rather strangely-- said problems with registry.

 

[Brink]

Hi Muinuddin,

Welcome to Vista Forums.

Once you have created the disk, see if running a Startup Repair might be able to fix the problem for you.

Hope it works for you,
Shawn

 

[muinuddin]

Hello Shawn

Thanks for your note-- the recovery disk booted ok--it is the first disk that has at least started up! But it gives me a message that there is a problem with a device connected to computer. i.e., from unplugging removable storage or faulty device (the disks seem to all be working)

gives Status Oxc00000e9
An unexpected I/O error has occured.\


I can look at drives in Acronis Disk Director-- the only thing funny is that a "B" drive doesn't seem to be recognized-- or is seen as a raid driver (the only thing on the B is the disk image)

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Muinuddin

 

[muinuddin]

A follow up-- in looking at Oxc00000e9 on the internet some Microsoft forums relate this to a corrupt registry-- when the whole system crasshed, I had been trying to tweak the registry based on instuctions for OmniPage 16-- saying that one needed to gain full control/access to gt past a "page not found" error message.

So it looks like the hope for this would be to try to fix the registry. I see instuctions for XP on web but nothing for vista.

Thanks again for any info.

 

[Brink]

Muinuddin,

The easiest way to repair the registry is to do a System Restore using a restore point dated before the problem. This tutorial will show you how to if needed.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/76905-system-restore-how.html

You might also contact OmniPage support to see what they may suggest to since it is their program that may be the cause of your problem.

Nuance - Support

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[muinuddin]

Thanks again Shawn-- I can't get into any of the Vista programs-- blue screen before Vista starts, and same after the boot up disk. I am trying to restore via Acronis True Image....

I do appreciate your responses!

 

[pl0x]

Hi, i tryed to send a detailed post but it didnt work, and im not going to make it as long as that again so ill just give the rough outline this time, any way...

My computer recently died :O after i was installing Vista SP1 and there was a power cut Double :O and now, when ever i try to start it, it goes into the advanced startup options and what ever option i chose it goes t the loading scree, the bar moves half wthen it goes to the blue screen stop error with an error of 0x24 and some more numbers after that. ive allready tryed to use the recovery disk that i found myself afteresearching my problem a while ago, but when i put it in the drive and it starts to "boot from CD:" it just sits there indefinatly :O. One time i pressed eject as i was bored it went to the ot manager it should have then i selected vista home basic as my OS and then it just went to the advanced startup options. I know my compuer h a recovery partion as ive used it before, when it was broken it automaticly went to them once before, but this time it doesntdo that, and even when i hold ALT and F11 it does nothing. also one time i held F8 to see if it would let me select recovery mode and for sme reason it sometimes goes to the advanced startup as usual, but other times it goes to a menu ive never seen before with debug options and driver restore etc.

I was just wondring if here was any way i could get the recovery disk to work, or acces my recovery partion, or if i have to buy a new copy of vista for boat loads of monies :O

FYI my computer is an Acer Aspire M1100 and ive been to the acer site looking for recovery disks etc but havnt found any.

Thank you for your time and these tutorials

(looks like this is a long one any way)

 

[Brink]

Hello pl0x, and welcome to Vista Forums.

You are going to need to do a clean install of Vista again since you lost power during the install of SP1. Unfortunately, this recovery disc is only good for repairing Vista and not for installing it. If you do not have a Vista installation DVD, or a working recovery partition that can reinstall Vista, then you should contact Acer to see how much they want for a replacement Vista installation DVD. It may be cheaper than having to buy a retail version.

Good luck to you,
Shawn

 

[pl0x]

K thanks for clearing that up fo me :D

 

[Brink]

Your welcome pl0x. Sorry about you having to reinstall everything.

Shawn