How can I restore the registry keys from another C drive on Windows 7 64-bit?

Question

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.

Answer 1

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

1. Login to your other Windows drive
2. Type "regedit.exe" into the search box
3. Expand "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE", click "FILE" > "Load Hive", navigate to your broken drive.
4. Browse to "Windows\System32\Config", select a Hive file from the list (SAM/Security = User Rights / Passwords, System = OS, Software = third party)
5. Click "Open" and name it, click OK
6. Modify away, though this will be pretty manual.
7. Left click Hive, "File" > "Unload Hive"

Answer 2

There are tools to delete BIOS password !

A. The best way of acting would be to do a system restore if there are RestorePoints. Boot from external media (USB/CD/DVD) go to Recovery and see if restore can be done.

B. If you have a full backup of system would also help doing a full restore.

In case you cannot use A. or B. -

1. Boot to another OS.
2. Replace system registry files for demagged OS in \Windows\System32\config:

DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE, SYSTEM

with same files from \Windows\System32\config\RegBack

(or the registry backup files made by Uniblue - you can do a search for "DEFAULT" on demagged drive).

Simple file delete and copy operation.

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DO NOT USE REGISTRY TOOLS - THEY CAN DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD !

In newer versions of Windows registry is handled pretty well and there is no need optimizing it.