Strange behavior after regestry crash

Long sad story:

It all started with a BSOD on boot due to being unable to load the software
"hive."

Booting to last known good configuration had no effect. I suspect that it
only works for problems with the system file not the software or other
files. The install CD repair option would not recognise the OS instalation,
neither with the ERD nor with the locate option. I was, and at the moment
still am unable to succesfully install a second instance of the OS. That's a
seperate problem. I was able to get the repair console to recognise the
system and I copied the software registry file from the repair subdirectory.
I didn't copy the system or any of the other files.

There are new profile directories for all of the users except the
administrator of the form hostname.user. In the administrator account, it
appears as though I lost some of the file folders that were on the desktop.
Is that possible?

Strangest of all, the client window portion of the folders pane in an
explorer window is missing.
I can make the folder pane come and go with the menu option and the tool bar
button, but it is painted with the gray frame color. Is there any way to fix
this?

Most important, the missing folders contained some fairly important stuff,
such as the serial numbers of some of the applications. Is there a way to
open the old software file and inspect or export some of the information,
such as serial numbers contined in it? I tried using the restore feature in
regedt32 and specifying the old file. In general, that is not what I want to
do, at least not blindly. However, I selected a key that I didn't think
would matter if it were overwritten and tried it. I got a message saying
that the operation was unsuccesfull. It didn't say why. I don't know if that
operation only works on .reg file format or if it couldn't read the file.

Any info would be appreciated.