Trying to restore installation from Windows.old folder

[davesev]

I was working on a laptop (with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit installed) that had some Windows/Update file corruption where no fixes I tried were working so I tried Microsoft's final recommendation, an "In-Place Upgrade" - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2255099/how-to-perform-an-in-place-upgrade-on-windows-vista--windows-7--window - but I apparently clicked the wrong option from the Windows disc boot and it just installed Windows 7 Home Premium (from the disc), made me create a new User (which obliterated the old users), and moved the previous install and User folders and Program Files to C:\Windows.old...

Now, I tried to follow online docs (such as some from Microsoft) to try to restore the old install and users and program files, but it gave me a bunch of permissions prompts (some of which would simply not let me copy), so I've got kind of a frankenstein, and I just want to restore the user's files and programs etc as much as I can. I made a backup before all of this using Windows Backup so I have all of the files and a system image.

The install works great now, it's just the user files/programs that are not completely restored. The user has all their files, but the user is not part of the login screen and the Program Files copy seems to have corrupted a lot of installs. The original install was last Windows-Updated in like 2014 and could not be updated (due to the corruption) but I think we're OK reinstalling the programs if we have to, I'm just afraid of losing any saved files that didn't go to the Users folder.

Any advice? Right now I'm copying over the Windows.old folder using SystemRescueCD to a USB drive because doing it through Windows failed for various reasons... Windows can be so frustrating sometimes, and I of course didn't help by clicking the wrong thing even though it looked correct...

 

[Megahertz07]

Do you still have all files and folders on C:\Windows.old ?
If you do you can restore the previous windows installation.

- Boot with a Linux disk.
- Create a C:/Windows.new folder
- Move all files and folders (except C:\Windows.old) to C:/Windows.new
- Move all files and folders from C:\Windows.old to root.
- Restart the computer and you'll have the old installation back.

To fix it Repair Install - Windows 7 Help Forums

Windows.old folder - Restore into a new installation - Windows 7 Help Forums

You can use the win 7 installation disk
Windows.old folder - Restore into a new installation - Page 10 - Windows 7 Help Forums