ANY WAY TO RESTORE A BAD REGISTRY!!!

[rkoenn]

This is a unique case. I have a persons laptop that appears to have the system registry file corrupted. Therefor it will not boot. I attempted a repair from the CD and command prompt. The only problem is that in copying the basic original registry files into the registry boot directory, I discovered that the system file was not in the repair directory. However there was a system.bak which I copied into the registry boot directory. Now when the laptop boots I get into windows but have no mouse or keyboard support and attempting to use a USB mouse has been fruitless. Windows is running but will go no further without input and I can't input. I believe this backup system file had none of the hardware drivers installed preventing me from doing anything. A chicken and egg problem. Therefor I cannot get into the hidden restore points directory to restore a good recent registry. Does anyone know of any way from the repair command prompt to get into the old restore points or is it impossible? Or any other method to get one of those good restore points back. I believe the whole problem is due to a corrupted registry system file. All help is greatly appreciated.

Is there a bootable floppy disk program that would allow me to get into the hidden restore directory. That might be a possibility.

 

[timswim78]

http://home.earthlink.net/~mvp_bert/html/tips.html#SRFromPormpt

 

[MiniDoom]

You can also restore the default registry from your windows CD. I believe you need to copy i386/system32 from the CD to your windows directory on the drive using command prompt. You will probably need to reload your device drives if you do this.

 

[rkoenn]

I don't think there is such a beast as a default registry. If you look in the I386/System32 directory there are just two files in there, a dll and an excutable. I am hardly an expert but believe that there is no such thing as a default registry and that the registry is created from scratch during the windows installation. If anyone knows differently about this please pass on the information. Even if it doesn't help with this problem. At the moment I am going to create a bootable Linux CD with the full Linux load on it that runs from the CD and see if I can get the the restore directory, which is in the System Volume Information directory on the hard drive. However, it is a "super-hidden" directory and I won't be surprised if Linux can't get into it. That is where all those old restorable registry files are. I have restored from there but you need to have control over the computer first and that is the problem here. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

 

[MiniDoom]

Originally posted by: rkoenn
I don't think there is such a beast as a default registry. If you look in the I386/System32 directory there are just two files in there, a dll and an excutable. I am hardly an expert but believe that there is no such thing as a default registry and that the registry is created from scratch during the windows installation. If anyone knows differently about this please pass on the information. Even if it doesn't help with this problem. At the moment I am going to create a bootable Linux CD with the full Linux load on it that runs from the CD and see if I can get the the restore directory, which is in the System Volume Information directory on the hard drive. However, it is a "super-hidden" directory and I won't be surprised if Linux can't get into it. That is where all those old restorable registry files are. I have restored from there but you need to have control over the computer first and that is the problem here. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

I cannot find proof on teh internet but I assure you I?ve done it several times I mean your computer is already broke if you are really that worried rename the directory to .old good luck.

 

[rkoenn]

I did solve the problem, complicated but it worked. I downloaded, booted, and ran Knoppix from a CD. I was then able to access the hard drive and the System Volume Information with the backup registry files. I still could not write to the hard drive, (I was using Knoppix 3.6 and I think 3.8 lets you write to NTFS drives but does warn you that it is possible to corrupt the file system) but I attached a card reader with a CF card (which Knoppix used with no problems, great OS) and wrote the latest backup registry files to the card. I then took this to my computer and burned them onto a CD (they were about 7 mb total). I then booted from the XP CD and went into the first repair option. Once I got to the command prompt I replaced the XP CD with the burned CD with the registry backup on it. It tuns out this drive was addressed as "F" during the installation. Then by hand I copied these backed up files to the Windows\system32\config directory. Upon rebooting everything was back to the last restore point and the system worked fine. A lot of work but it saved my client from having to try a repair install or start from scratch again.