Discussion on:

Access more troubleshooting tools with Windows 7 System Recovery Options

Have you used any of the options on the System Recovery Options menu? If so, what was your experience?

Windows Memory Diagnostic have used this option many times on windows xp/vista/win7 if you have memory probs or blue screening its a must to use.

Another vote for this! It is one of the few tests that tests memory above 4GB (if x64 bit WinPE used) and it found a memory fault at 5GB point (on a system that kept crashing in normal use) but MemTest86+ could not find a problem!

if press and hold the [F8] key doesn't work I suggest press repeatedly the [F8] key because it worked for me

which set of command-line tools do you have to use?

Most BIOS today have three settings for handling hard drives (IDE, ACHI, RAID). If you installed Windows 7 with this setting at either ACHI or RAID, but it somehow reverts to IDE (like flashing the BIOS!), Repair will make the hard drive unbootable and possibly unreadable (been there, got a nice t-shirt!).

If Win7 reports it can't find a boot disk or anything like it, before you do anything else, check the hard drive settings in the machine's BIOS!

In my last experience - brand new PC with Win7 HE Pre - I have noticed a lot of blue screens (BSOD) repeating randomly.
My first thought was - drivers. Win7 is relatively new...

Reinstalled the system many times, with Win drivers, manufacturer drivers - nothing helped.

Then I thought - ok - HW error. Firstly removed PCIe GFX and work with onboard gfx - BSODs again.

Then I recon - ok, it must be RAM - runned this MS RAM test for 3 days - everything ok

I changed the disk - same story.

On the end I almost went crazy, changed the motherboard and it is ok now.

I've used about 10 differnent burn-in tests and they all went through well. I really really torture the pc - 100% cpu 100% ram and constant disk usage for more than 48 hours - but it wasn't showing any errors or even stopped with BSOD.

It would be really nice if some adequate, kernel based, burn in test would existed in Win7 (or Win8) that will really point a problem out.

I had a problem this week where my system failed to boot. A VERY quick blue screen said somthing about a device was not accesible or somthing like that. I tried the repair service and it said that it was unable to fix. Fotunately I had a complete duplicate of my drive on another drive two days older. I was able to install the backup drive and then access the bad drive to retrieve files. I have never been able to fix my system with the windows tools. They always tell me that it can't fix anything.