Windows 7: Unable to repair Windows 7 after hardware upgrade

If you can access the registry from another o/s or winpe and load the hives, there must be a way of manually replicating what p2p adjust does.

I know one or two things that are required.

Might have time to look at it tomorrow and see if I can figure out the needed changes.

If you can find a solution that means I can avoid formatting & reinstalling everything from scratch I would be eternally grateful.

Out of curiosity, what would happen if I deleted some of the drivers in the old Windows installation? For example, if I found out the name of the HD controller drivers from my old motherboard & deleted those, would I possibly get further along in terms of booting up into Windows?

You're vaguely warm.

Deleting them won't do it. They need to be uninstalled - or windows will look in the registry and try to find them.

Looking into it now.

The problem as I see it is that I can't access the registry from the old OS while in the new one. Is there a way to access the old registry?

Yes, it's easy.

Is there something unusual about the HD?

If windows 7 installed to it fine from the dvd - then it has the necessary drivers in it's file repository.

Are you asleep? LOL

Sorry, wife made me go outside & play with the kids :P I've downloaded the file.

The drive itself is fine, but the BSOD error I get indicates there's a problem with the HD controller driver, so it's not working woth the new motherboard at the moment because it's using the drivers for the old one.

If you have a windows system image, load the vhd.

Open Disk Management, Click Action>Attach vhd>Browse to your WindowsImageBackup folder.

Inside is a folder called Backup with a date - inside that is the vhd - select it and disk management will load it up and give it a drive letter.

Browse to the mounted vhd\windows\system32\config.

Copy the SYSTEM hive to somewhere on your HD. Rt click and zip it up - post it here.

(It just says SYSTEM - no extension)

Probably easier if I find and remove the drivers and put windows into setup state for you.

Will post the hive back up - then you just copy it to mounted vhd\windows\system32\config.

That will overwrite the existing System hive.

Then Detach the vhd.

I don't have a system image from before I installed the new hardware - is it going to be easier to just put the old stuff back in & start the process from the very beginning?

Everybody misunderstood that.

What do you mean by this:
If you have now reinstalled windows clean to the HD - and it is working - then yes, you can restore files you backed up previously.

If you have not yet reinstalled windows - then copy the SYSTEM hive from the non-booting o/s , zip it and post it up.

It will only take a few minutes.