Machine: Toshiba Satellite L450D-11V
Problem: Faulty hard drive, new drive to be installed. Customer has no recovery discs and Windows COA label with product key is worn out so would like to find a way to reinstall Windows 7 without buying a new license.
Solution:
The recovery partition contained eight ‘.swm’ files which we managed to save to a USB hard drive.
The files were:
10739XSP.swm
10739XSP2.swm
10739XSP3.swm
10739XSP4.swm
10739XSP5.swm
10739XSP6.swm
10739XSP7.swm
10739XSP8.swm
Booted up with Windows 7 DVD disc, chose Repair and Command Prompt.
At this point, USB drive was D: and blank hard drive was C:
The executable file ‘ImageX’ (the tool for working with .wim and .swm files) was also on the USB drive. If you don’t have ImageX, Google it – it’s available for download.
Changed command prompt from C: to D:
Ran the following command to merge all .swm files into a single ‘.wim’ file:
imagex /ref 10739XSP*.swm /export 10739XSP.swm 2 boot.wim
This created a 6.5GB .WIM file which was the whole Windows 7 preinstalled partition.
Then ran the following command:
imagex /apply boot.wim 1 C:\
This applied the image to the partition C:\
At this point it would not boot so we ran StartUp Repair from the Windows 7 DVD
Then we ran the command:
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
At this point Windows 7 started and began setting up all the other preinstalled software that Toshiba includes.
Several reboots later and all is running perfectly!
The following is from a comment below this post from Frank K. It is very detailed and shows how he was able to use a similar method to restore his Asus laptop:
“I had the same problem and your solution worked for me.
Another solution was to copy the recovery-partition to the new disk and let it do the restore, but the partition copied with Acronis did not boot. Therefore, I was happy to see your solution how to restore a system with swm-files and without booting from a disk with the recovery partition.
For an ASUS notebook I had to made some minor changes, I changed
imagex /ref 10739XSP*.swm /export 10739XSP.swm 2 boot.wim
to
imagex /ref asus*.swm /export asus.swm 1 boot.wim
Asus-Files are named asus[1-3] and contain only one image (C:)
Your command
imagex /apply boot.wim 1 C:\
then worked fine for me, too.
What I did in detail:
1. I took a new HD (500GB), connected it to a working Win7-PC via USB, created two “classic” partitions (MBR, not GPT), C: 400 GB, D: 100 GB.
2. I copied the contents of the Recovery-Partition (all swm-files and Imagex.Exe) from the original HD (I was lucky so far, the C:-Partition showed drive errors already) to D:-partition on the new disk.
3. I created the boot.wim – file, see command line above.
4. Then I installed the new HD in the Notebook and booted with a Win7x32-DVD.(It has to be x32, Imagex did not work for me with x64.) Select Repair Options and Command Prompt. (The Selection “Restore from a Win-Image doesn’t work, it can´t find the boot.wim)
5. Select drive D: at the prompt and start the image restore with ImageX’ apply-option (see command line above).
This takes some time.
6. When finished, I entered
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
but this did not work for me, the computer didn’t boot.
I started with the Win7x32-DVD again, go to repair options and select the item “Fix startup problems” (I do only have a german DVD, so I don’t know the original english name for this function, but there is one selection that fixes startup problems.).
This did correctly activate the partition and the MBR-Information https://mannapotheke.de/... It shows a log when the mbr is fixed.
I rebooted the machine and it started perfectly, initiating the standard Windows welcome at first start.
Now I’m installing updates etc.
At a later time I deleted the now no longer needed D-Partition and extended the C-Partition to use the whole disk via Disk Management in Administration.
Normally, I have a C-Partition for the OS and D: for Programs/Data, but most of the users mess these things up, so for those who don´t care I create a C-Partition only.
I looked at many descriptions on the internet, complicated, not working, frustrating – your fix is the only one that worked for me, THANKS!
Sorry for my poor English, but I hope many other people can benefit of your solution with these extra hints.”
We fix laptops everyday at our laptop repair shop in Kent. Hopefully this site has helped you!