Merge 2 registries and more

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
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Guest

I messed up the boot on an old Fat32 drive running XPHome system(upgraded
from win98). I ghosted it to a new 80G drive. It would not boot so I
compounded the problem by performing a parallel install of new WinXP for a
new system. I now have 2 XPs (Windows and WinXP). I also now have a boot menu
with 2 winXP Home(s) and one Windows choice.

It seems I have 2 choices:

1) Can I merge all of the old registry with the new one to try and restore
all former user settings/program accesses, etc?
I now have dupicate users due to new XP (all usersWinXP, assistant.MANAGER,
default.WinXP, local service.nt auhtority, etc) and from old XP (all users,
assistant, default user, local service, etc.)
I would then need to make sure the system boots in the old xp system and
remove the 2nd WinXP installation and all users/settings. And get rid of the
boot menu.
or preferably:
2) I do have the original 20G drive with the no-boot problem and it would be
easier to fix that and then Ghost it to the new 80G drive. How do I restore
boot functionality to the original drive (the old sys.exe, but for XP)
without a in-place re-install of Windows and the loss of program access, etc.
I could then leave well enough alone or convert the drive to NTFS.
 
Well, with info from another post, I followed Steve's article about doing a
"2nd level R" install XPRepair on the original drive. Ok that worked. The
only part missing in the article was to not create a new user in the process.
XP will recognize the old one. It also helps to know the machine name (esp.
if it's on a network).
It's up and running again.
I tghen cloned it to a new 80G IDE drive.
 
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