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Recovery after registry crash

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Had a crash on my registry. I re-installed Win XP, but how do I get all of my applications and data back? I can see they are still sitting on my computer (using up a heck of a lot of space!), but I can’t access them. To put a little twist in the matter, it’s a Dell laptop that came with software pre-installed so I do *not* have the administrator password!

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If you can see all the files, getting the data back should be no problem. Just back it up to a safe place.

The apps, on the other hand, may present a bit of a problem. Since many apps rely on registry information that is created during the install process, and your registry was destroyed, the only way to get the information back into the registry is to run the application installation or repair routines.

There are many different tools available to recover a ‘lost’ admin password. Most shareware sites will have a selection you can use to recover or reset passwords. If you have an Ultimate Boot CD, I think there are some tools there, as well. Good luck!

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if it is windows xp home edition the admin password is blank however since you already reinstalled this will not help you you will have to reinstall all the applications again

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If you can see the data but not access it you need to Take Ownership of the Files by folowing the directions here:-

http://tinyurl.com/3aw7

Provided you are logged in with Admin Privilages you don’t need any Admim Password it’s just that your current copy of Windows isn’t allowed to access these files. If you had them encrypted you’ll also ned to copy over the Encryption key which will vary depending on how you Encrypted the files originally.

Once you have access to your Data all you ned do is copy the files into the New User Account.

For your software you are going to have to reinstall it as the [b]Windows Hooks[/b] no longer exist but on the up side you will not loose too much more HDD space as the bits and pieces that go into Windows are not all that big. If you install the software to where it was previously it will overwrite the files & Folders on the drive and just allow you to continue depending on the software you may even have the option to run a Repair process so you’ll not even need to enter in Product Keys.

Col

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Hal 9000, thank you *so* much for that link to Microsoft on how to take ownership of files. It was *exactly* what I needed to do! I’ve got all my old emails and data files back, and I also have access to delete all the apps that I can’t re-install. They’re taking up mega-space on the hard drive, so at least I can free that up now.

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