RECOVERY and INSTALLATION from .SWM files

 

This post is about the process of re-installation of a windows preinstalled edition shipped with a laptop computer in the form of .swm (splitted WIM [Windows Image File] ) files from an existing windows OS (may be PE).

.swm files are found usually in the hidden recovery drive of a laptop computer, mine was called HDDRECOVERY and was of 07 (Hex) NTFS as shown in Ease-Us Partition Master and 0x17 Hidden NTFS as shown in MiniTool Partition Wizard.

I have a Toshiba Satellite C655 laptop and the HDDRECOVERY partition is used to recover my computer to the original out-of-box state which includes an installation of Windows 7 SP-1, some preinstalled apps and some games from Wild Tangent.

It came very handy to me in 2 occasions, both were results of a destroyed boot sector, but failed in the third after a disastrous install of android(x86) on my pc.    {Yeah , I’m an OS guy !)

Normally I only use linuxes from a live cd image from a pen-drive, but I was somewhat thrilled to see if my pc can really support the Android OS.

The OS was installed perfectly , without a glitch – except one – the grub4dos entry on my main HDD destroyed the original windows boot sector, and furthermore, lead to some error in the TOSHIBA HDD RECOVERY process, which ultimately formatted my c: drive , and, left my lappy unbootable for windows.The Android installation still worked, but I realized that it was just junk – it couldn’t access my HDD’s partitions and I can’t even access the internet.

So I finally had to buy a windows 8 install DVD and install from it.

I loved my Win-7 SP1 and decided to bring it back. Here are the steps that I followed :

1. First, I used Macrium Reflect to create an image of the HDDRECOVERY drive.I know there are other programs available, but I only had reflect at that time.

2. Next, I explored the Image a bit by mounting it and found that a folder named ZZIMAGES held most of the mass of the partition – almost 11 gigs. I found that it contained fourteen .swm files and a .crc file (waste of space, as it looks to me).

3. Since it was an installation partition, I knew by looking that these files were related to the INSTALL.WIM file present in most of the windows installers these days. But the extension was of .swm – not one I was familiar with. So, by hit and trial , I tried to open it with 7-zip and voila! - it opened.

4. I noticed that it contained an unrecognized file AND a filelist.xml file.

5. So, as a rough estimate , I created a partition of 25 gigs, went to the ZZIMAGES folder, and having 7-zip installed, right clicked on all the fourteen images all at once and clicked on extract. (The folder was the new partition.)

6. After the completion of the extraction (which is a pain and took nearly 2 hrs), I got a partition that had a ready-to-boot Windows 7 SP-1 file system as if after the first reboot after the installation of a windows release.

7. Next, I created a boot entry for partition using EasyBcd [went to add new entry and the Windows Tab, selected the partition and clicked on Add Entry. ], and rebooted my computer to it.

That’s It Folks. Have Fun !