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Vista registry backup

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6 replies

by maidens

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I need to repair Vista but I have Office 2007 installed and i cannot find the little "credit card" thing with the product key on it. If I backup the windows folder to a USB HD then reinstall Vista will I then be able to locate the Office product key from the backed up windows folder using a utility like Keyfinder (load hive)?

6 replies

by mahesh

You can use product key finder tools and retrive the key from it before beginning reinstallation / repair. Ofcourse you need office cd to reinstall office later on. But most of the time if you have problem with vista os, reboot with OS cd and repaire the installation... that's it. You will find all programs installed previously ...running fine. That's my experience .....

by maidens

Thanks for the reply. I tried running Vista fix, it said fixing HDD, this could take up to an hour, 18 hours later (left all afternoon and night) still at the same point, no hd activity. Restarted tried UBCD4WIN / Keyfinder recieved error "cannot load external hive". Seems you need to be on Vista to load a Vista registry. Cannot be done fron XP. I don't have another machine running Vista or I would slave this drive. I also tried all the alternative boots, safe mode, last known good etc They all just hang. Std boot either hangs or BSD.

by maidens

I don't seem to be able to use any keyfinders as I cannot load the registry hive and the machine won't boot. As I understand it XP cannot load Vista registry hives, so boot disks (Bart PE, UBCD4WIN etc) don't work. The only way I can see is to reload Vista then use a keyfinder to load the backup registry from within the new Vista, has anyone tried this?

by maidens

I Can't believe I missed this, but there was a bad sector right where the software hive was stored. Ran Chkdsk /r and could then load the hive remotley and retrieve the product key. Thanks for all your help.

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