System protection = lost!

Could be. fortunately microsoft has a trial of their enterprize edition which is good for 90 days. Go to MS download and burn to dvd. Use that dvd to repair

good luck

I know that updates on this thread have long since past, but I wanted to update it as a resolution had not been confirmed, and I had the same issue as described by the OP. I have found that windows 7 does not offer a repair installation as Windows XP did, and if you try the upgrade option, it will tell you that you must load the OS and run the installation from there. Not much help.

I had my hard drive divided into two partitions, so I installed an evaluation copy of Windows 7 on the other partition. From the new working OS, i went into the D:\windows\system32\config directory (where D is the drive letter of the broken Windows 7 installation) and found a folder called RegBack. I made backup copy of the DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE and SYSTEM registry files in the config directory and proceeded to copy those files in the RegBack directory over the files in the config directory. I rebooted the PC and was able to successfully load my original Windows 7 installation!

I also found that I could have enabled System Restore on the old Windows 7 from the new Windows 7 installation, and then gone back into to Repair my Computer and performed a System restore to a time before this issue occurred which most likely would have worked as well.

Also keep in mind that this issue occurred because of a Scandisk windows performed after some bad memory caused my system to do a hard reboot while at work one day. The Scandisk deleted a ton of registry entries it believed to be in error, causing the issue. If you have encourntered this same type of issue, I encourage you to check for hardware issues, such as memory or hard drive.

This was my work computer, and although I had all my data backed up, I really did not want to do a clean install of Windows because of the down time it would have taken my to re-install and re-configure all of my software.

I really hate it that Microsoft took away the repair installation option in Windows 7, but at least in this case I have found that there is a way around that.

Well, there seems to be a solution. All I need is someone else's desktop so I can stick my laptop hard drive in... *headdesk*

ketchup214 said:

I had my hard drive divided into two partitions, so I installed an evaluation copy of Windows 7 on the other partition. From the new working OS, i went into the D:\windows\system32\config directory (where D is the drive letter of the broken Windows 7 installation) and found a folder called RegBack. I made backup copy of the DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE and SYSTEM registry files in the config directory and proceeded to copy those files in the RegBack directory over the files in the config directory. I rebooted the PC and was able to successfully load my original Windows 7 installation!

I just registered to this board to say thanks as this solution worked perfectly for me. Also, I would like to add that you do not need another Windows installation for this since it can also be done using the repair console from a Windows 7 DVD.

kiddikai said:

ketchup214 said:

I had my hard drive divided into two partitions, so I installed an evaluation copy of Windows 7 on the other partition. From the new working OS, i went into the D:\windows\system32\config directory (where D is the drive letter of the broken Windows 7 installation) and found a folder called RegBack. I made backup copy of the DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE and SYSTEM registry files in the config directory and proceeded to copy those files in the RegBack directory over the files in the config directory. I rebooted the PC and was able to successfully load my original Windows 7 installation!

I just registered to this board to say thanks as this solution worked perfectly for me. Also, I would like to add that you do not need another Windows installation for this since it can also be done using the repair console from a Windows 7 DVD.

Me too!

I can't even begin to express how thankful I am. I hope ketchup214 reads this, considering it's an old thread, but if you do: You're awesome! Last time I had this problem I had to re-install in the end. You saved me a couple of headaches...

hey, i have an win7 iso file in my hard drive