Windows 7 Windows.old question

Roisen

Member

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Joined

Feb 13, 2007

Location

Folding in Ames, IA

• Sep 20, 2009

• #1

My buddy just installed windows 7 and it moved all of his files to windows.old. Is it possible for him to recover his installed applications without having to reinstall all of them?

 

Hardin

Member

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Joined

May 29, 2004

Location

South Carolina

• Sep 20, 2009

• #2

You should be able to move most of the programs to your new program files folder, but some programs might not like this and ask you to reinstall.

 

OP

Roisen

Member

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Joined

Feb 13, 2007

Location

Folding in Ames, IA

• Sep 20, 2009

• Thread Starter
• #3

Alright thanks for the help

 

DaveHCYJ

Senior Member

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Joined

Jun 18, 2003

Location

San Diego

• Sep 20, 2009

• #4

Any programs that write to the registry or any other place other than the Program Files directory (which is like all of them), will need to be reinstalled. Windows.old is more so you don't lose user data.

 

OP

Roisen

Member

​

Joined

Feb 13, 2007

Location

Folding in Ames, IA

• Sep 22, 2009

• Thread Starter
• #5

That's what I figured at first as well.. Is there a way that I can recover his old registry and merge it with his current one? As long as the files are in the same place, I don't see why this wouldn't work. Of course I would need to make sure that the old registry didn't overwrite existing keys, but only add new ones...

Any ideas?

 

DaveHCYJ

Senior Member

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Joined

Jun 18, 2003

Location

San Diego

• Sep 22, 2009

• #6

The effort required to find every last registry key is most likely not worth it, not to mention they may not even translate into a different version of windows, and if you miss one there may be errors just waiting to happen in the future. Save the frustration and just reinstall.