Windows – How to restore the registry keys from another C drive on Windows 7 64-bit

biosbootwindows 7windows-registry

I ran Uniblue registry booster on my system which was working fine. It did a full back up of the registry keys. Now I cannot boot from that disk. I also cannot get into the BIOS!

To restore the registry I have to run Uniblue registry booster from within Windows. I cannot get there.

I can boot up on another C drive, and can see the files on the drive with the problem.
Is there any way I can find the Registry Booster backup files and restore it from the other disk? Or find the registry backup and upload it into the registry so I can boot off the other disk again?

Or, Can I do a Windows repair from the other disk? NB: not getting in to the bios means I cannot boot off the CD/DVD! (I can use the DVD drive from within Windows)

Any ideas? I do not want to reinstall everything yet again, it takes about 6 hours.

Best Answer

It goes without saying that you should back up all your user data first and anything important on the broken machine. As you should be aware, there are risks in doing this, and really the easiest thing would be a full install - and to not mess with the registry. But, that of course is up to you. However, you may see latent issues if/when you get Windows back up...

Here is a pretty good guide, I used it once when I was in IT (though that was a while ago).

You should be able to load the other drive's Hive file and restore that way:

EHOW Run-Through

Login to your other Windows drive

Type "regedit.exe" into the search box

Expand "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE", click "FILE" > "Load Hive", navigate to your broken drive.

Browse to "Windows\System32\Config", select a Hive file from the list (SAM/Security = User Rights / Passwords, System = OS, Software = third party)

Click "Open" and name it, click OK

Modify away, though this will be pretty manual.

Left click Hive, "File" > "Unload Hive"

Related Solutions

Windows – Read registry files in Windows “config” directory from a backup

MiTeC's Windows Registry Recovery can read the files and even export them into REGEDIT4 format like a normal registry backup.

MiTeC Windows Registry File Viewer is a viewer for Windows registry hives of all (e.g. NTUSER.DAT, SYSTEM.1ST, SAM, etc. - not .reg files). It displays the file content in a tree view, similar to the standard RegEdit display and includes features like registry searching, dumping and exporting to REGEDIT4 format. The program also allows you to explore the NT/2k/XP security records. In order to view most of the supported files, you need to create a copy of them first, as they cannot be used while they are used by the NT/2000/XP system.

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Windows Registry Recovery is freeware.

Windows – How to reset the registry using the repair console in Windows 7

Press F8 during boot
Select "Repair my computer"
Select the hard drive that windows is installed on
Choose Command Prompt from the next menu

Run these commands to make a temporary copy of your registry

cd /d c:\windows\System32\config
xcopy *.* c:\RegBack\
cd RegBack
dir

Examine the last modified dates of the Software, System and SAM files. Were the files created before your problem started?
If they were created before the problem started then type these commands:
```
copy /y software  ..
copy /y System  ..
copy /y Sam ..
```
(the two dots are part of each command)
Reboot. If things don't work, you can restore the original registry by copying the files from C:\Regback to C:\Windows\System32\config.

Best Answer

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Windows – Read registry files in Windows “config” directory from a backup

Windows – How to reset the registry using the repair console in Windows 7

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