Can I access Registry from System32\Config?

[Thinkster]

I have a customers computer that has a failing hard drive and won't boot windows. So I've installed a new drive, however there are settings that I need to be able to get that are installed in the registry on the failed drive. I was able to transfer over the SAM, SOFTWARE, SECURITY, SYSTEM, DEFAULT files to a good drive but How can I view these files or convert them back into a .reg file or something?

[Camarade_Tux]

Try to run regedit and go to file, load hive.

[LLXX]

Why don't you just copy the whole registry over?

[Thinkster]

Tried Regedit, but "Load Hive" is greyed out so it wont let me.

And how do I copy the whole registry over? The PC is NOT bootable, so I can't go into regedit from it's Windows. There are many bad sectors on the drive and of course some are in the System files area. The hive files I was able to copy by putting the drive in my computer as a secondary drive were located in the System Volume Information\_restore{xxxxxx-xxxxxxxx} folder.

So I need to somehow be able to "reconstruct" the registry or at least view it based on the hive files. I would imagine there must be some utility to do this?

[Camarade_Tux]

First click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE before trying to load the hive.

[Thinkster]

First click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE before trying to load the hive.

Ahh... I see. But If I do this on my own computer, it's not going to import it into my registry right? I just want to be able to view it to pull some important settings then unload it.

[Camarade_Tux]

It will create a subkey (you'll have to provide a name, type *anything*)and when you're done, select the subkey, go to file, unload hive.

[McTavish]

I've used RegEditPE from a BartPE boot CD to access the reg on non booting hard drives. If the old dive is too bad to work on, try making an image of the OS onto a good drive. Alternatively, if the individual hives you have recovered are not corrupted you could try swapping them with the hives in a good OS on a good hard drive.

The UBCDforWIN comes with RegEditPE already included.

[LLXX]

Tried Regedit, but "Load Hive" is greyed out so it wont let me.

And how do I copy the whole registry over? The PC is NOT bootable, so I can't go into regedit from it's Windows. There are many bad sectors on the drive and of course some are in the System files area. The hive files I was able to copy by putting the drive in my computer as a secondary drive were located in the System Volume Information\_restore{xxxxxx-xxxxxxxx} folder.

So I need to somehow be able to "reconstruct" the registry or at least view it based on the hive files. I would imagine there must be some utility to do this?

Them hives is your registry. Copy them back to system32\config with the appropriate name (SysRestore renames them, but do some Internet searching on what the registry files are named and you'll be able to figure out their correct names).

[Thinkster]

Them hives is your registry. Copy them back to system32\config with the appropriate name (SysRestore renames them, but do some Internet searching on what the registry files are named and you'll be able to figure out their correct names).

I know the hives are the registry, but I was hoping to be able to "compile" the hives into one .reg file or something that I could view in notepad or view on my computer's regedit without having it load anything into my personal registry. I'm NOT looking to replace my registry files with these, I simply want to view it and extract a couple important keys for the customer. I've already replaced the hard drive on the customer's computer with a new one and reinstalled Windows. But now I have his bad hard drive hooked up as a master on my IDE2 port. When I try to access certain areas of the drive, it makes clicking sounds and gives my a Cyclic Redundancy error. Luckily I was able to copy the hives from one of the restore points to my computer's hard drive and so that is what I'm working with.

[LLXX]

http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Primarily for recovering lost administrator passwords (hence the name) but also includes offline registry editor.