Restore part of Registry

[Jonathan]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.registry (More info?)

My PC hardware died. I replaced everythiung except the
case and disk drives. After 3 weeks of mucking around, I
finally have NT4SP6a finally running again on the new
hardware and almnost all my data back. The problem is I
can't restore the registry off tape or the ERD I have
without restoring the System portion of the registry.

If System gets restored, the PC won't boot because all my
hardware is different - SCSI drive controllers, everything
except the SCSI drives themselves, has changed and NT isn't
at all happy (blue screens with various errors). Is there
a way to restore everything *except* the system portion of
the registry?

Thanks!
Jonathan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.registry (More info?)

From a parallel install you can try replacing the software hive with and
expanded version of your backup but I wouldn't hold much hope for this being
a stable install.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"Jonathan" wrote:
| My PC hardware died. I replaced everythiung except the
| case and disk drives. After 3 weeks of mucking around, I
| finally have NT4SP6a finally running again on the new
| hardware and almnost all my data back. The problem is I
| can't restore the registry off tape or the ERD I have
| without restoring the System portion of the registry.
|
| If System gets restored, the PC won't boot because all my
| hardware is different - SCSI drive controllers, everything
| except the SCSI drives themselves, has changed and NT isn't
| at all happy (blue screens with various errors). Is there
| a way to restore everything *except* the system portion of
| the registry?
|
| Thanks!
| Jonathan

 

[Jonathan]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.registry (More info?)

Thank you all for the answers. I will dig in, though it
looks like I'm going to need a third NT install (doable, if
aggravating) in order to do much of anything though. As
soon as I restore from tape, the restored-to NT partition
becomes unbootable and I can't muck with the one I've got
because it's running, so... ;-)

A related question that may ease this pain. Are there any
tools out there that can read a registry file (say Software
in my case) and spit out all the keys in that file in an
importable format regedit will take? I'm not averse to
buying something inexpensive ($<50), although free is
better. ) I've never managed to set up the conditions
where "Load Hive" isn't greyed out. Even if I could, I
don't want to - I just want pieces of the Software hive
from an unbootable partition at this point.

Thanks!
Jonathan

>-----Original Message-----
>My PC hardware died.

 

[Calvin]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.registry (More info?)

Hi Jonathon,

You can try manually restoring selected hives from the backups. You'll need a
parallel install of NT running to do this - ie: a second copy of NT4 on the
machine independant from your current version - it will have the ability to open
and modify things that are usually locked on your main copy of NT whilst it is
running. (A warning - if possble put this parallel install on a different
partition to your current install - otherwise you can have problems with the
parallel install fiddling with things in the \Program Files folder :-( )

Have a look at these Microsoft Knowledgebase articles before proceeding:

244378 - System Cleanup After a Parallel Installation of Windows NT 4.0
259003 - How and Why to Perform a Parallel Installation of Windows NT 4.0

Once you have a running NT4 parallel installation (I'd recommend applying SP6a
to the parallel install as well before you proceed) you can recover the
neccessary hives (eg: the the HKLM/Software tree is held in
%systemroot%/system32/config/software. ) from a backup tape and copy it over the
top of the existing file in your primary installation. Alternately, if the
'update repair disk' function was run recently on the original install (the one
that now sits on the backup tapes) then the files held in \winnt\repair will be
up-to-date copies of your registry hives, in a compressed state. You can you
'expand' from a command prompt to recreate the registry hives from these
compressed sources. If the 'update ERD' hasn't been run in recent times, these
compressed hives will be massively out of date and probably of no use to you :-(

I'd suggest taking a copy of the existing hives that you replace and store them
somewhere safe - if the 'replace' of hives doesn't go well, you can re-instate
the originals and no harm is done - you rebuild will work as before

You may have problems of course, because your rebuild of the machine will have
generated new SIDs for the machine and all user accounts - which the registry
hives you are restoring know nothing about, but it's worth a shot.

After you've done your replace, reboot and see how you are progressing.

Hope this info helps.

Calvin.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.registry (More info?)

Hmm, if you have all data back and running system, what else do you want to
recover? Any special software?

But yes, if you really have tape backup, it is usually possible to recover
whole system including software, all you need is "compatible" hardware (at
least compatible with NT system not with old hardware).
Procedure is:
* Restore old system to disk (this sometimes needs another OS instance to be
used depending on backup software features).
* Install secondary NT OS instance, preferably to different partition or
disk. If you need to install it to different folder on the same partition as
original OS instance, you should to install also the same version of MSIE
and to apply the same service pack level as applied to original OS instance
due shared files within Program files tree.
* Boot to secondary OS instance and replace critical drivers of original
instance by renamed drivers of secondary instance. You need to take care
about disk driver(s) (if you are using scsi() notation in boot ini, you need
to replace both kernel and loader drivers) and eventually also hal driver.
Third critical is video driver, but it cannot be replaced this way. Check
boot.ini file for [VGA] option of original OS instance - if there is none,
create new one: make copy of original OS record line and add following two
switches to the end of it: /basevideo /sos, also change description part of
this line to know what record is what in startup menu. Record should look
like this:

scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Win NT 4 [VGA]" /basevideo /sos

* Try to boot using [VGA] option of original OS instance. If you end with
blue screen due fail of original video card helper service, name of it will
be displayed on blue screen. Write it down and reboot to secondary OS.
- backup system32/config folder of original OS instance.
- run regedt32.exe, select root of HKLM tree, choose load hive option from
registry menu and navigate to system. file located in system32/config folder
of original OS, name it like TEMP. Now navigate to failed service in system
tree of this new subtree and stop loading of this service by changing its
start value to 4. Select root of TEMP tree and choose unload hive option.
* Try to boot to origal OS using [VGA] option again.
* In case of success first uninstall original video driver. Unistall all
related software and replace driver by standard SVGA driver. Do not instal
new driver over old one!.
* Install new disk driver and remove old one - I know you replaced it but
system do not know about this and will replace it back in next repair or
update (SP) attempt.
* If needed, update also hal driver by regular way.
* If applicable, install new network card and, after it is installed, remove
old one. Do not remove old one first, removing of last card from system can
harm protocol stacks.
* Reboot and check for errors - either on screen or in event.log. Try to
solve all errors found here before you start to install new things (like new
videoadapter driver).

luck

George


"Jonathan" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> píse v diskusním príspevku
news:5bbe01c474b2$c17f6990$a601280a@phx.gbl...
> My PC hardware died. I replaced everythiung except the
> case and disk drives. After 3 weeks of mucking around, I
> finally have NT4SP6a finally running again on the new
> hardware and almnost all my data back. The problem is I
> can't restore the registry off tape or the ERD I have
> without restoring the System portion of the registry.
>
> If System gets restored, the PC won't boot because all my
> hardware is different - SCSI drive controllers, everything
> except the SCSI drives themselves, has changed and NT isn't
> at all happy (blue screens with various errors). Is there
> a way to restore everything *except* the system portion of
> the registry?
>
> Thanks!
> Jonathan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.registry (More info?)

Load hive is not greyed out only if you are on root of HKLM or HKU, because
additional hives should be added to "real" registry root. Other trees are
either dynamic or link. HKLM is root of all system related registry trees
and HKU is root of all user related registry trees.



"Jonathan" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> píse v diskusním príspevku
news:677501c47576$bd362710$a401280a@phx.gbl...
> Thank you all for the answers. I will dig in, though it
> looks like I'm going to need a third NT install (doable, if
> aggravating) in order to do much of anything though. As
> soon as I restore from tape, the restored-to NT partition
> becomes unbootable and I can't muck with the one I've got
> because it's running, so... ;-)
>
> A related question that may ease this pain. Are there any
> tools out there that can read a registry file (say Software
> in my case) and spit out all the keys in that file in an
> importable format regedit will take? I'm not averse to
> buying something inexpensive ($<50), although free is
> better. ) I've never managed to set up the conditions
> where "Load Hive" isn't greyed out. Even if I could, I
> don't want to - I just want pieces of the Software hive
> from an unbootable partition at this point.
>
> Thanks!
> Jonathan
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >My PC hardware died.