Error editing registry hive

[wilgaa]

Hi. I'm stuck. I'm trying to shrink my windows installation to that of mindows. I first started by copying my entire system32 directory to c:\mini, including the config directory. However, after loading the registry hive and changing the %systemroot% variable to 'C:\MINI', I receive the 'registry is corrupted...' message. And this is after after I had changed all the 'C:\WINNT' entries to 'C:\MINI'. To recap, and to be more specific, I did the following:

1) Copied all the files in C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32 to C:\MINI\SYSTEM32

2) Opened the registry editor.

3) Selected the HKLM key, and loaded the C:\MINI\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM hive under the 'a' key.

4) Closed the registry editor.

5) Used a bulk find/replace registry utility to change all of the 'C:\WINNT\...' entries to 'C:\MINI...'.

6) Repeated steps 2-5 for the remaining hives.

7) Edited boot.ini to add C:\MINI as a boot option.

8) Rebooted.

9) Booted the new entry.

10) Received the 'Your registry is corrupt...' message.

11) Tried again with the '/minint' and '/winpe' switches, both alone and together. Same error.

12) Using Process Explorer, managed to reduce the number of files to 354 files.

13) Tried again, received same message.

14) Edited hive, set 'SystemSetupInProgress' to '1'.

15) Renamed setup.exe to setup.old (in 'mini' system32).

16) Copied cmd.exe to setup.exe.

17) Tried again. Same error.

18) Deleted the config directory.

19) Copied the C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\*.sav files to C:\MINI\SYSTEM32\CONFIG.

20) removed the '.sav' extension.

21) Tried again. Received the infamous 'hal.dll missing...' message.

22) Imported mini 'SOFTWARE' hive under the 'a' key.

23) Navigated to 'HKLM/a/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion'.

24) Tried to create a new REG_SZ value named 'SystemRoot'. Failed with message 'Cannot create value. Error writing to registry.'

25) Tried again, only this time choosing a 'dollar' value for the key (ex: '$a$'). Didn't work.

26) Tried creating any key/value of any type under the imported hive. Didn't work.

For reference, I have attached the listing of the system32 directory (min.txt) and 'old' directory (the one that has the files that I removed to get it down to >400 files (del.txt).

Hope this helps.

min.txt

del.txt

Edited March 16, 2007 by wilgaa

[Jazkal]

I'm not following what it is you are trying to do.

Are you taking a Windows 2000 or XP install and trying to create a mini-windows install? Or are you trying to convert a WinPE install to run off a hard drive?

[wilgaa]

I'm not following what it is you are trying to do.

Are you taking a Windows 2000 or XP install and trying to create a mini-windows install? Or are you trying to convert a WinPE install to run off a hard drive?

Win XP...and yes, and mini-windows install (from a hard drive)

Have a look at the attachments to see that is indeed complete...for a minimal system, that is

Edited March 16, 2007 by wilgaa

[Jazkal]

Why not just install windows to that directory name to begin with?