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I had some issues where an Windows KB patch borked all of my MetroApps because of access permissions and in the process of fixing that (I managed to restore functionality to the start bar and search) my SYSTEM registry key was damaged.
I tried a variety of things to solve BSOD messages that I had and one of my final ditch efforts was to recreate hive files from a registry backup that I made before trying to fix the MetroApps by cold-swapping the SYSTEM hive in /config (How to create a registry hive file from a .reg backup).
This actually worked and if it weren't for my current error this would have been an amazing recovery, but I fell into another BSOD that there doesn't seem to be any information about online.
I currently have I01 initialization failed as my BSOD and the last thing that I can think of to salvage this system would be to:
1. Clone my drive
2. Reinstall windows on the cloned or original drive
3. Copy over the boot cache file in System32\codeintegrity and see if it boots or
4. Copy over the SYSTEM hive from \config to the bricked system and see if it boots
If that fails, I would be left with the original bricked system and the reinstall that loses all of the user settings, programs, etc.
So my question is this:
Is it possible to recreate the user settings\program settings\etc (making it essentially like nothing had ever gone wrong in the first place) from the system that doesn't boot on the one that does through registry edits and precise copy and pasting?
This seems like it should be theoretically possible given that everything on the computer is either stored as a file or a non-system bricking registry key, but I've never done something like this before. Thanks for your time.
Toast
Posted 2018-07-26T15:38:06.747
Reputation: 3
1First of all, welcome to Super User! To be perfectly honest, I have installed and configured hundreds of Windows 10 computers throughout the last three years, and at some point I think that you need to weigh the benefits of all the hours you have devoted to troubleshooting versus a wipe-and-reload that you know would work. Just my 2¢-worth. – Run5k – 2018-07-26T15:46:53.107
Under normal circumstances (with a younger system) I would have went this route. – Toast – 2018-07-26T16:39:22.347
Little update. You can bring over an old user profile from windows.old using the tool user profile wizard. This will restore all of your personal settings, but not application ones. I still want to find out if there is some way to recreate application settings using leftover app data files in roaming/local/etc along with registry keys to bring back cruical applications. – Toast – 2018-07-27T01:41:11.710
If you are enjoying the troubleshooting along with the associated learning experience, that's great. As I said before, it would probably be much faster to perform a full wipe-and-reload, even if you don't have a "younger system." I was previously running Windows 10 x86 on a 10-year-old laptop with 2 GB of RAM, and it really wasn't too time consuming to reload it. – Run5k – 2018-07-27T01:44:46.033