Next time I rebooted, I got the Welcome Screen, which I usually bypass. Clicking on my user name was not good enough to log in. It'd display, Loading User Settings and then come back to login screen without getting to desktop. I have a dual boot system with Linux as other OS (Using ntfs-3g it's possible to read-write NTFS partitions from Linux). I could do most work on Linux but not gaming. I needed that XP back, reinstalling was not an option.
So....booted into Linux and fired up Google to look for some solution. There were many such cases but only one solution was applicable in my case, that is..restoring the registry.
There are many ways to restore registry one being using Windows Recovery Console. But that's slow as it involved booting using XP cd and running commands to copy/rename files from crappy command line of Windows. Why use Windows command line, when you can read-write NTFS partitions from Linux itself!! :p
Here are the steps:-
First identify your XP partition on which it's installed. In my system it was sda1.
Then make a new directory anywhere. Name it reg. Type
mkdir /reg
Now get into Windows\system\config directory.
Type
cd /mnt/sda1/Windows/system/config
Notice that / is used in linux not \
Copy the following 5 files into Windows\repair directory
software, system, security, sam and default
Now find your system restore folder on XP partition. It should be like
/mnt/sda1/System Volume Information/_restore{74AB4D58-11E9-4AAD-83C4-A8687AfE0C89}
Get into snapshots folder. There should be some folders there named RP** where ** stands for some number. Open the most recent folder and copy the following files
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SAM
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SECURITY
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM
_REGISTRY_USER_.DEFAULT
into reg folder you created previously.
Rename these files by deleting the _REGISTRY_MACHINE_ part from each one so that the new names are SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE, .DEFAULT and SYSTEM
Copy these 5 files to Windows\System32\Config folder
Reboot, get to the welcome screen. You'll be able to login using one account at least.
In my case I logged in using Administrator account. (only one visible). Then I created one account with same name as older on and got all my account settings and documents back.
If you don't have linux, you can follow the instructions from this website.
0 comments:
Post a Comment