Windows 7 - Can't boot windows 7 after registry restore

After doing a complete registry backup and then a registry restore using GFI Home, my windows 7 (64 bit) machine will not boot from the hard drive. After the startup POST, I only get a blank screen.

I am able to boot to a Windows 7 rescue disk and have tried running the Startup diagnostics and doing a system restore to yesterday's system restore point but with no luck.

I have run the Windows Starup Diagonostics several times. Most of the time it returns 'no problems found - successful boot' but occasionally it returns 'bad or corrupt boot manager - successfully repaired'. In no case will windows then boot.

After it passes the bios screen the hard drive will flash once and the screen will go blank.

Can someone help me with replacing the startup files manually through dos or do I need to restore the operating system to day one?

Thanks in advance for your help.

T

Welcome to SF!

Please keep us posted on the thread on the other forum, just so we know what you have tried and what's going on.

Can you boot up in Safe Mode at all?

Hi and thanks.

No I can't get windows to boot at all. I can only get my rescue disk to boot.

T

Try to run a Startup Repair . If you need, you may download and burn Download Windows 7 System Recovery Discs — The NeoSmart Files to run startup repair .

(blue texts are links. Click on those to get the infos )

My bad in the earlier post. Startup Repair is what I have been running...serveral times. Sometimes it reports 'no problems successful boot' and a few time it reports a 'missing or corrupt boot manager - successfully repaired'. The results however are always the same blank screen when I try to boot from windows.

T

Try restoring from an earlier restore point.

I've done that a couple of times to no effect.

Try running startup repair a few more times, while I rack my brain and request more help from the Gurus.

hi terryl , do you have a floppy drive in your pc and access to an old vista start up floppy , run it and at the command prompt type "c:\windows\explore.exe" with out the quotes that should get you to the desktop , that way you should then be able to run the Windows 7 repair install , if you do not have access to a floppy drive try to use a bootable usb pendrive

Replace the registry hives in "YourWin7DriveLetter:\Windows\System32\config" with the ones from "YourWin7DriveLetter:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack".

The hives are the files with no extensions.

Can be done from command prompt, but it's easier to use a bootable app. with a file transfer Wizard. There's a good one on this freebie: FREE Rescue Kit Express | PARAGON Software Group ...