Did not create backup yet and need to restore.

[Shabakthanai]

Put off an important task by not backing up my system.

I have a couple of downloaded games I want to not lose. They were free downloads with the purchase of either my new AMD 8 core processor or my new Radeon 2gb GPU.

I was having a dual monitor problem and while trying to fix, the Operating System became buggy.

I thought I would be able to restore to an earlier day, but without backing up the system, I suspect that is not available either.

I have my Windows 7 Pro CD, can I use that to restore the system or do I have to reinstall? If I have to reinstall, is there a way to preserve my downloaded games?

Thanks for any help, I am a rookie with this system.

 

[TrainableMan]

I thought I would be able to restore to an earlier day, but without backing up the system, I suspect that is not available either.

Are you saying you didn't run the Windows back-up software to back up your entire system? Windows also has a built-in feature to take restore points & allow you to restore from that. It should create a restore point at least once a week plus I believe it creates one before every Windows Update. I suggest you type System Restore into the Orb-start menu and see if you have any restore points (Usually it shows you the last one or two but you can check the little box in the bottom left corner to see more). Try one of those just prior to your erroneous "fix" and see if that helps.

If that doesn't help you can boot to the W7 DVD and when you reach the installation screen you will see an option in the bottom corner for "start-up repair". You could try that and it won't wipe out your programs or data but it depends what got messed up whether that will help at all.

If you do a full W7 reinstall then you have to reinstall the programs too and I don't know what you would do about your freebee games. If you actually downloaded the full game as an installation program then that "exe" is really just data and as long as you don't format the HD before reinstalling W7 then that "data" would still be there and you can rerun it to reinstall.

 

[Shabakthanai]

**

Are you saying you didn't run the Windows back-up software to back up your entire system? Windows also has a built-in feature to take restore points & allow you to restore from that. It should create a restore point at least once a week plus I believe it creates one before every Windows Update. I suggest you type System Restore into the Orb-start menu and see if you have any restore points (Usually it shows you the last one or two but you can check the little box in the bottom left corner to see more). Try one of those just prior to your erroneous "fix" and see if that helps.

If that doesn't help you can boot to the W7 DVD and when you reach the installation screen you will see an option in the bottom corner for "start-up repair". You could try that and it won't wipe out your programs or data but it depends what got messed up whether that will help at all.

If you do a full W7 reinstall then you have to reinstall the programs too and I don't know what you would do about your freebee games. If you actually downloaded the full game as an installation program then that "exe" is really just data and as long as you don't format the HD before reinstalling W7 then that "data" would still be there and you can rerun it to reinstall.

I tried to find the "system restore" option first, but did not have restore points. In fact I thought that was the case when the problem arose. Then I thought system restore was not working because I never made a backup (??stupid me??). In your last paragraph, are you suggesting that I can install Windows 7 over Windows 7 to repair as well as not lose applications? I was hoping something like that was available. You have been very kind; I appreciate the help.

 

[TrainableMan]

In your last paragraph, are you suggesting that I can install Windows 7 over Windows 7 to repair as well as not lose applications? I was hoping something like that was available.

No, I'm not saying that.
If you actually run the install option you will lose the programs (although you might still have the installer).
But you can try the "start-up repair" option which should be available from the installation menu and that should just repair any system files. It's a "long shot" but easy enough to at least try.