System repair disc issue - can create but unable to boot from

[cordwainer]

Recent 3XS system (the V1 base unit).
Tried various BIOS settings, unplugging USB peripherals, etc.
Have created a system repair disc onto 3 different media, 1 DVD and 2 CDs, none of which my system will boot from.

1 DVD and CD created from my initial windows 7 sp1 install, 2nd CD from the subsequent (and current) reinstall. (I think the content size of them is 168mb each)
The system will boot from other bootable CDs just not the system repair discs.
Depending on how I've set up the bios/uefi the response is either 'Non-system disk' or 'NTLDR missing' (they still got that for win7?) or ignores CD and starts windows from hard disk as normal.
I've tried selecting the CD from the boot menu of the motherboard as well as arranging boot device priorities.
This is not giving me much faith in the windows backup and restore facilities in general.

Not in any great need to restore or recover anything at this point, however it would be nice to know that I could boot from a system repair disc as and when the need is real. And call me fussy, but I don't want to rely entirely on the Installation DVD for my recovery options such as restoring a system image.

I should perhaps point out I'm new to Windows 7 and UEFI.

Thanks in advance for any ideas..

[Scarletsboy]

Removed info

[Singh400]

If you are getting that message only from that media. It means that media wasn't created correctly. IIRC NTLDR makes a disc bootable. Hence why it tells you it is missing.

[cordwainer]

@Scarletsboy, thanks for your time but, to be honest, that was a pointless waste of space.

[cordwainer]

@Singh400, thanks I'm aware of that but if a fresh install of Windows isn't creating a correct repair disk, what are the possible reasons / solutions?

[Phage]

If the system will boot from the original disc, I'd be guessing a problem in writing to the optical media when creating a repair disc.
So, could be a bad Optical drive, cabling or some weird buffer overrun whilst writing to the disc. Do you have access to a spare writer ? Try swapping that in with new cables and on another sata port.

[cordwainer]

Phage,
But I have successfully created OTHER bootable discs using the same drive, it is only the Windows repair discs which fail to boot. There are no errors thrown up when creating them either. Unfortunately I don't have another drive I could try. Sorry I seem to be giving negatives to each bit of help so far :-(

ps. i don't blame Atari ;-)

[pctech2012]

Are you using a utility within Windows to create these or trying to copy from an original Windows disk supplied by Scan?

I am pretty certain Microsoft protect their DVDs in such a way as to prevent casual copying so its likely this will fail if you are doing a straight disk to disk copy.

[cordwainer]

Just the standard Windows 7 'Create a system repair disk' option in the control panel.

[pctech2012]

Hmmm, I should take delivery of my new scan system over the next few days, I'll look into it for you.

[cordwainer]

Here's something no-one thought to ask: have I activated my windows installation?
Yes - today.
I'll update whether that makes a difference to booting from repair disks just as soon as I've got the motivation to try it again, as opposed to 4.50AM..

[pctech2012]

I do my best thinking about 11.30 p.m.


Just got my system today so will have a look for you but yes activation is probably best as Windows is in defend Redmond mode.