Restore your Win 7 PC fully from Windows.old folder

Just messed up today with MBR in Win 7 Ultimate x64 .

I had no backup/restore point.

I did everything possible with repair- not worked. You know, there were thousands of apps I hate to get the feeling of installing the big programs like PS CS4, Office...

Then popped up Win 7 DVD, installed in the same directory ( I knew , Windows will create Windows.old folder with all programs, settings...) with same user name, password, Computer name.

It installed as usually, I first activated it. Then downloaded "take ownership" reg file. I went to C: drive. Took ownership one by one. The Windows folder took 15 mins to be completed.

Went to Windows.old . Cut the folders one by one and pasted them in right places.Several prompts came...its still running...it will take 6 hours or like that.
But,
All programs are running, I just checked PS CS4 ...voila!
I used cut instead of copy, because, I can see which files are not copied. I will copy them later.
Hope it helps someone!

I wanna hug the person who made the reg file

Is that the Takeownership reg mod that adds the option to the right click menu? Add "Take Ownership" to Explorer Right-Click Menu in Win 7 or Vista - How-To Geek

That can come in very handy at times to avoid need to manually go through the several steps needed in order to raise permissions. Glad to see you saw successful results restoring things from the Windows.old folder.

For repairing mbr problems there are a few other shorter steps you can take however like booting from the 7 dvd or selecting the startup repair option found in the F8 start menu in 7. This repairs most minor things prevently Windows from starting up normally.

With the 7 dvd you can also boot up from that into the repair tools section and use the command prompt option for the manual commands as well. "bootsect /nt60 C:/" without the quotes is one option. The more commands are "bootrec /fixboot" and "bootrec /fxmbr".

And if you happen to be one of those who occasionally tries out a live Linux distro, How to fix your Windows MBR with an Ubuntu liveCD | ArsGeek

Just a few thoughts to add here since those can save you some time. With a second drive or partition another option would be creating a system image of the entire C primary or drive which is another way to preserve everything you have on the main drive. Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup

Thank you for the reply.
Yes, that was that "take ownership" that comes in context menu.

I tried to recover mbr with all methods (automatic,dos mode...all), but failed.
Thank you for the linux link !

Hopefully that will be what you need there. Let me how it goes since I still have to try that one here sometime.

Night Hawk said:

Hopefully that will be what you need there. Let me how it goes since I still have to try that one here sometime.

-MS softwares those needs WGA pass will not work (= reinstall over the current one), but your settings will be saved.Office will not ask you serial number

-Shortcuts may be broken (not all!) both from desktop and start menu.

-For the core files, you may have to take ownership for even individual file or stop the process (like explorer.exe)

-Windows 7 Manager will ask the serial number, if registered.

-If you had anything in the recycle bin, that will be restored too

-PS thinks there is no problem :)

-No problem with IE and Opera

-No problem with HP drivers.

-Windows thinks you are doing something wrong, gives alerts (perhaps checks WGA), but obviously nothing happens.

One can develop some software which can perform these actions in one click

Dont try it if you can restore the MBR in usual normal way...keep this one as last the option.