Registry Editing Causing MAJOR Problem

[axizor]

Hi. Please help me so much. I am so worried and can't explain how much I'd appreciate your help. In regedit, I edited a few things. I went to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion. I edited "ProgramFilesDir" and "ProgramFilesDir (x86) both to S:\Applications, which is a directory on my second hard drive. I then restarted and noticed a few icons weren't showing and it didn't start up right. So under the Start Menu search, I went back into regedit and thought I put it back to where it was. I put "ProgramFilesDir" back to C:\ Program Files and "ProgramFilesDir (x86)" back to C:\ Program Files (x86). I THINK. I may have misspelled it or something. Well after restarting Windows, the few icons on my desktop that weren't displaying properly at first showed up. However, when I tried to go into msconfig, it said: "Windows cannot find 'C:\Windows\system32\msconfig.exe". Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again." This has done this for other programs too. Even programs onto my other S: drive! Please help me as I am very worried and only have one product key, so I cannot reinstall Windows. I have copies of my registry back from October, but have no idea if they would be OK to use. I don't know what to do and am very worried. I can't even go into System Restore, as it gives me the same type of error. Please help me, please. I would appreciate it so much.

I have Windows 7 Pro 64bit.

 

[jitpublisher]

Why can't you reinstall Windows? You can reinstall it as many times as you want if it is the retail version. If it is OEM, you can still reinstall as many times as you want, as long as it is on the same machine.
Of course now that you have learned your lesson, you realize there is nothing in there you can do except screw stuff up unless you really, really, really know what you are doing?

 

[hang-the-9]

You can use your old registry to restore, even if you have installed different programs, the worst that will happen is that those new programs won't work.