XP Recovery Instructions for UBCD4Win

[alexander]

Preface:

 

Before you begin, please read the original tutorial and understand what it is i am explaining here, this is nowhere near as detailed as my other tutorial, its only meant to explain to you how to cut corners using UBCD4Win

 

 

READ THIS BEFORE STARTING:

http://hypography.com/forums/tutorials/17183-xp-recovery-the-long-way.html

 

Tutorial:

 

For this tutorial, you will need a UBCD4Win CD.

 

- Download the builder from UBCD for Windows

- Run the installer and extract the contents to C:/UBCD4Win

- Put in an XP installation CD, and copy the I386 folder to C:/I386 (which is not a bad idea to have, anyhow)

- Read the instructions on the website and run the builder.

- Personally, for dealing with harddrive etc issues, i have a separate build of UBCD, i take out all AV and spyware junk out of it, as well as a many programs as i can that dont pertain to hard drive, and all the extra bootable images, before building the CD.

 

When the Builder comletes you are left with a standard Iso, burn it to a cd, and you are ready to go.

 

To this point i was vague, because building UBCD is slighly different, all the time, and it does have a nasty tendency to not work when you need it to, remember you can always go back to the original write up, this will simply speed the process up

 

Boot into UBCD, their slick explorer-like interface is awesome for this kind of minute file manipulation and the entire restore process can be summed up thusly:

 

- Open up File Explorer

 

- Navigate to your system hard drive, you should see all of your files in there, handy, eh?

 

- Go into the "Windows" directory and create a new folder, the way you normally would in windows... call it tmp

 

- Now go into the System32/config

 

- You should see the following files:

system

sam

software

security

default

 

- Very simply, holding down control, click to select the files, right click on one of the selected files and go say Cut

 

- Navigate back to the tmp directory, right click on the empty space, and say Paste

 

Nearly 1/2 way there already

 

- Now lets go into tools, folder options, and enable ourselves the view of the hidden system files, etc.

 

- Go to you system drive, and navigate to the System Volume Information. Remember, you can now just give yourself enough permissions to view the folder, but i think here, you will at least be able to view the folder.

 

- Enable Details in the View drop down

 

- in System Volume Information, find the one folder, or folders starting with _restore{ followed by a bunch of numbers, that were not created that day, go inside, and find the restore point.

 

- Choose one, go into the Snapshot folder

 

- Now you can Control (Ctrl) select the following files:

_registry_user_.default

_registry_machine_security

_registry_machine_software

_registry_machine_system

_registry_machine_sam

 

- Right click and say Copy (not Cut)

 

- Navigate to Windows/system32/config folder, and paste the files inside

 

- Rename the files to their previous counterpart names:

_registry_user_.default - default

_registry_machine_security - security

_registry_machine_software - software

_registry_machine_system - system

_registry_machine_sam - sam

 

- Close explorer, hit the start button and reboot your machine

 

You have just done the same thing as i described in the previous tutorial, in 1/4 of the time.

 

Enjoy

[PetRose]

Hi Alexander

Had go use (in understanding of recovery) using your article which I believe closely quote the Microsoft article KB307545. But one typo has sneaked into your 'Short Version', and that close to the last step:

-"Navigate to Windows/system32/control folder..."

where you should have noted:

-"Navigate to Windows/system32/config folder..."

 

Anyway, I had to refresh my UBCD4WIN boot DVD since my last was built on WinXP SP2, so I started grabbing my official WinXP SP2 source and followed the build-instructions and SlipStreamed Win-XP SP3 onto the HDD copy of my WinXP SP2 build.

See UBCD for Windows.

Configuring the becoming UBCD Boot image, I found what seemed to be a useful tool (to me and perhaps to a lot of others): Registry Restore Wizard, within the FileTools !

Once my boot DVD was built to save my other laptop with the registry problem (SYSTEM registry), and I fired it up with UBCD boot, I started the Registry Restore Wizard.

Amazingly easy to use, I could simply select which Restore Point to goback to, and just press 'OK'. A few copy and renames were done by the Wizard, and it was finished.

Ejected my boot DVD for another reboot using my HDD C:WINDOWS partition, I found that it was starting without any problems :eek2:

So now I would recommend everyone with this cumbersome registry problem(s) to this wonderful easy recovery method.

Thanks for pointing me to this UBCD4WIN via your article :)

[alexander]

Thanks for pointing out the typo.

 

The original ideas were derived from a few places actually, i recall seeing a microsoft article, then reading some other article on the net, and putting a few thoughts together to come up with a solution to the problem at hand, then it was a matter of actually typing up a howto, just so i dont forget how i did it, so yeah, definitely there are references that probably didnt get listed, but there were around 4-5 of them and i drew bits and pieces of ideas from all...

 

And i think back when i wrote these articles there might not have been a registry restore wizard, or maybe there was, but its still a lot more fun to know how to do it :eek2:

 

You are welcome, UBCD4WIN has saved my butt a few times. Hopefully i wont have much need for it in my new job :) (i really dont like windows)