Re: Viewing registry on old drive

From: Mark V (notvalid_at_nul.invalid)
Date: 10/10/04 

Date: Sat, 09 Oct 2004 22:48:55 -0700

In microsoft.public.win2000.registry wrote:

>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>In microsoft.public.win2000.registry InABind wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all~
>>>
>>> I had a hard drive meltdown earlier this week, and was
>>> able to salvage almost everything file-wise to a new HD
>>> and new Win2K install. My problem is that I want to
>>> restore my Outlook Express folders and settings to the
> new
>>> HD.
>>>
>>> The old drive is unreadable to Windows and to the
> Recovery
>>> Console (does not prompt for Admin pass and drops to
> CMD
>>> prompt). I have, however, recovered the entire old
> WINNT
>>> folder intact and saved it to the new HD. In order to
>>> restore the OE stuff, I'm supposed to grab 4 keys from
> the
>>> old registry and import them to the new registry. How
> can
>>> I go about doing this? Can I just rename (while in
>>> Windows) the current registry to a temp name, bring in
> the
>>> old registry and fire up REGEDIT to dump the keys I
> need,
>>> or am I way off base here... help greatly appreciated!
>>
>>1) backup completely the current (live) registry using
> ntbackup.exe,
>>ERD, [x] "Also backup...."
>>2) Ensure you have backup copies of the static recovered
> registry
>>hive files before "loading" (below).
>>
>>Then (W2K) start regedt32.exe and use "Registry (menu),
> Load
>>hive..." to load the appropriate hive file (likely
> SOFTWARE or
>>ntuser.dat (Current User)) *1
>>Review regedt32 Help, "load hive" and "loading hives"
> beforehand.
>>
>>Once the hive is loaded in regedt32 start regedit and you
> can access
>>the loaded hive as usual (in regedit) exporting the keys
> you need to
>>a REG file.
>>
>>Close regedit. Unload the loaded hive from regedt32.
> Close
>>regedt32.
>>
>>Make a backup copy of the exported .REG file. Now you
> need to edit
>>the exported .REG file doing Search & Replace to alter
> the registry
>>path component that reflects the temporary name you used
> in regedt32.
>>IOW change the incorrect strings to be whatever is needed
> such as
>>"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" for example. Also remove any data
> that is not
>>specifically required as you do not want to overwrite
> *everything*,
>>just what you need. For "Current User" data you will
> need to load
>>into HKEY_USERS and later import to HKEY_USER\<SID> on
> the current
>>system.
>>
>>When finished Import (merge) the REG file.
>>
>>The larger question may be "what do I need from the
> recovered
>>registry?" It seems you already have a source authority
> for that.
>>
>>
>>*1 ntuser.dat would have existed in your old Profile
> (not in the
>>Windows tree).
>> ===========================
>>
>>That I hope answers your question and correctly. But I
> have to
>>wonder why not just go to an OL/OE group for details and
> Import data
>>from the recovered data files... What registry settings
> for OE could
>>be worth doing all of the above?
>>
> Excellent response Mark, much appreciated.
>
> The backup procedure is located here:
> http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx

YW and I see now why that article wants certain registry values.

Below you are going outside this group's primary focus as I see it.
If you can indeed access the old file system, the short answer is
"backup anything and everything while you can". Once that is done
you can try various recovery techniques on the old installation
without losing anything else. Best of luck to you.

>
> I certainly would rather do it an easier way if I could,
> and again I'll say that while the drive is unreadable from
> Windows Explorer or Recovery Console, I do have access to
> the entire file system (100% AFAICT) using Stellar Phoenix
> NTFS Recovery software. I don't know if just fixing the
> boot sector might even bring the entire hard drive
> bootable again, as this was definitely not a hardware
> failure. I'm just afraid of messing with the boot or MBR
> areas and ending up NOT having access to the filesystem
> any longer, before I have the chance to get everything
> backed up. Now that I have a fresh version of Win2K
> running and all my data backed up, I just need to get this
> OE data brought over. It's very important data (or I
> wouldn't be bothered with it), as I run a webserver and
> have about 12 email accounts within OE. This is definitely
> worth my time to get it all restored.
>
> If you have any other suggestions, I'm all ears (or
> rather, eyes :) )
>
> ** For purposes of completeness, and what might prompt a
> response as to how to make the old HD bootable again, here
> is what originally happened:
>
> I was downloading a large number of files (in excess of
> 1,000) overnight. I left the machine downloading
> and 'locked' it (CTRL-ALT-DEL "Lock Computer"). When I
> arrived in the morning, all looked well, so I typed in my
> password and hit Enter. A small dialogue box popped up
> saying "Your password expires today... would you like to
> change it now?" I thought this strange, for as long as
> I've run Win2K now (>4 years), I've never seen this prompt
> for an Administrator login. I selected 'No' figuring once
> inside Windows, I'd check the Users admin area and look
> around. As soon as I mouse clicked on 'No', the machine
> clicked, screen went black, and it began re-booting. It
> went through the BIOS POST quickly, said 'Searching for
> boot sector on IDE-0' (or similar), then said "Error
> loading Operating System". Thus began my horror story for
> this week.
>
> In the BIOS (ECS Elitegroup K7S5A v3.1), the drive config
> area refuses to recognize the drive's actual parameters
> any longer. Highlighting it and pressing Enter to auto-
> detect it results in it saying "AUTO - 163GB" but no
> cylinders or anything are detected as is usual (although
> the drive size is correct). If I save and exit the BIOS,
> then come back in, the 163GB is gone and it just
> says "AUTO" unless I highlight and press Enter again. In
> Windows, with the drive connected as a Slave, if I click
> on the drive letter in Windows Explorer, windows reports
> that this drive is not formatted, would I like to format
> it now...? Phoenix reconstructed the entire filesystem,
> but probably 90% of what was recovered was put into 'lost'
> folders (including the WINNT folder contents). While the
> folder names were apparently 'lost', the files themselves
> are 100% intact... everything was there and salvagable to
> my amazement. It's all backed up, new system up and
> running, all I gotta do now is get that OE stuff ported
> over and I'm back to being productive again.
>
> Thanks again~
> IAB

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