Startup Repair Problems

Hi all

I'm very excited about Windows 7, it's the best MS OS ever in my opinion.

However, I've been experiencing some problems with Windows Startup Repair. Where we live we suffer lots of power outages. I have a UPS, but I sent it in for repairs after it got some lightning damage. So now, whenever there's a power outage, when the computer starts up again, Startup Repair is the automatic choice selected if I'm not present at the computer to select "Start Windows Normally". Yesterday that's exactly what happened. I spent the last few days downloading 1.6GB of firmware for a customer of mine. While I was away yesterday, there was a power failure. As usual, Startup Repair was selected automatically, and I wasn't there to change it. After Startup Repair finished, all 1.6GB of firmware was deleted.
It has also happened before that a game or some piece of software would be uninstalled after startup repair finished; though this was never a crisis, obviously it could be.

So I have two questions. Firstly, is there some way to disable Startup Repair, or to change it so it won't be the default option?

Secondly, I can't imagine that MS would be so stupid as to delete people's software permanently; it's probably in some sort of "quarantine" directory. Could anyone point me in the right direction?

Thank you!

Open a Command prompt (right click - run as Administrator) enter the following:

bcdedit /set {default} recoveryenabled No

This will disable Startup Repair from automatically booting if there is a problem problem.

But I don't think this is the reason for you losing the data. Possibly the download is progressing during the outage, and only, at that stage, being loaded into a ram temp file..

Have you disabled automatic restarts in the System - advanced system settings - Advanced., That might also help.

Thank you very much, I disabled it! However, it wasn't the download that was disrupted. The 1.6GB was made up of about 8 different executables, all of them stored in a folder on my desktop. Any ideas about where I can find them? I already did a search but I couldn't find anything.

No much help, I'm afraid. I can only suggest the IE default. Users - username - Downloads

If you told the system not to reboot on system failure, would that do any good?

If the files are gone, it may have done a system restore to a previous period. You might be able to find somehthing in one of the temp folders, but the downloads are normally moved after download, I believe.