Recovery software handling XP System Restore Offline

Hi,

I am trying to repair the XP machine of a friend : it boots OK but hangs at the moment where the user selection is supposed to appear. Same thing in safe mode or when trying to restore the last working config. I have checked with UBCD4Win that the filesystem is OK and the H/W seems functional.

Looking around, I found there is a Microsoft tool, formerly developed by Sysinternals, called ERD, that makes it possible, using a WIN PE boot CD, to restore previous configs saved with "XP System Restore". I have an eval copy of version 5.0. It boots OK, but refuses to go further since it detects XP Pro SP3, which is not supported in this version. My friend is certain his PC is running XP Home SP3 and not Pro.

I have thus 2 questions :
- Is there a way to "trick" ERD 5.0 to make him see XP Home instead of XP Pro (since it is most probably a XP Home - my friend has the reinstallation CD provided with his Fujitsu Siemens tower, they are indeed XP Home)
- Do you know an equivalent tool, not Microsoft made, which would not have such limitations ?

Thanks !

 

Sysinternals ERD 2005 was for any Windows nt, 2000, XP, 2003. Then came version 6 (Microsoft)

Could need a chkdsk or your friend may have a corrupted registry - the Recovery Console may help. You must be careful with OEM installations.

edit : re-read post

 

I was once in a similar situation. Couldn't boot even to safe mode to use system restore. However, I was able to use Recovery Console (BartPE/UBCD would have been better) to manually copy the registry hives backed up by system restore over the corrupted registry hives.

In Windows XP Pro/SP3 at least, your registry hives are stored at C:\WINDOWS\system32\config

The usual names are:

system
DEFAULT
sam
security
software
(and maybe ntuser.dat in the systemprofile folder but you probably don't need to replace that).

Those files are in use so you cannot copy them or over them when the system partition is online, but if you boot to a WinPE environment with UBCD or something, then you can just rename them (for backup) and move the their counterparts to that folder from C:\System Volume Information\... or whereever system restore keeps the backups. (I don't use system restore anymore because it's too unreliable imo, so don't remember the location)...

 

There's an evaluation version of Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset 5.0 at <link removed by MrBrian>.

Edit: I removed the link because when the evaluation cd is run, you're told that the evaluation has expired.

 

Thanks all. I already have tried the DART tool, but it won't work (it says "unsupported OS" at login). I will definitely try to copy a set of registry files to the standard location and try another reboot.