Possible to recover windows user settings?

Does anyone know of a way to restore windows user settings (system name, user accounts, "my documents" folder associations, etc...) after doing a clean install of windows? The hard drive was not formatted, but the install was done as a clean install overtop the existing windows, as opposed to using the restore option. I have a copy of stellar phoenix recovery suite, so if I have to i can try and manually recover the windows directory. Basically what i'm asking is: a) is there a less difficult method than manual recover? and b) if not, does anyone know specifically what i should by trying to recover? I really appreciate any help.

Edit: I should mention that the mistake was realized immediately after the install (no new account names or network domains were created).

CPUonNO2 said:

Does anyone know of a way to restore windows user settings (system name, user accounts, "my documents" folder associations, etc...) after doing a clean install of windows? The hard drive was not formatted, but the install was done as a clean install overtop the existing windows, as opposed to using the restore option. I have a copy of stellar phoenix recovery suite, so if I have to i can try and manually recover the windows directory. Basically what i'm asking is: a) is there a less difficult method than manual recover? and b) if not, does anyone know specifically what i should by trying to recover? I really appreciate any help.

Edit: I should mention that the mistake was realized immediately after the install (no new account names or network domains were created).

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If you:

a) Wiped the HDD, no, not really, it most likely overwrote that part of the HDD

b) Did a recovery install, it should have kept that...

I did neither. During an install you have the option to do a "fresh install" of windows without formatting. Unless by wiping you mean setup deleting windows files. Either way, the recovery software shouldn't be underestimated. I've recovered all my data from an accidentally formatted drive (with a full fresh windows install) before. It's surprisingly powerful stuff. I'm leaving for work in a short few so we'll see what I can do. I'll post the results for anyone who might need it for future reference. I'm going to restore the windows system32 folder and the entire "documents and settings folder", just to be safe, but wikipedia has an excellent article on exactly what files contain registry info if you want to be a little more conservative.

CPUonNO2 said:

I did neither. During an install you have the option to do a "fresh install" of windows without formatting. Unless by wiping you mean setup deleting windows files. Either way, the recovery software shouldn't be underestimated. I've recovered all my data from an accidentally formatted drive (with a full fresh windows install) before. It's surprisingly powerful stuff. I'm leaving for work in a short few so we'll see what I can do. I'll post the results for anyone who might need it for future reference. I'm going to restore the windows system32 folder and the entire "documents and settings folder", just to be safe, but wikipedia has an excellent article on exactly what files contain registry info if you want to be a little more conservative.

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I think we are using different terms here, here is what I see them as:

Recovery install: You put in the Windows CD, boot from it and tell it to install "on top" of the current windows install, keeping your settings, files, etc...

Fresh Install: You put in the Windows CD, format your HDD and install Windows on a blank drive, loosing your settings and files in the process

On my windows install CD at least, there's a third option, to set up windows without formatting. It doesn't do a recovery install (which would have saved me all this trouble). It leaves your hard drive files and structure intact, but replaces windows - settings (registry) and all. Esentially someone hit the wrong button but didn't realize it until he got to the screen where it asks for a master computer name and whatnot. I've had instances in the past where i've formatted and reinstalled and still had certain registry entries load into windows (had to pull the partition and re-format to actually get a clean install) so I'm pretty confident that I can recover most of it. I'll find out for sure in about an hour though! Thanks for taking an interest and offering help. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I have done what CPUonNO2 has done at least twice; clean install of XP withOUT formatting the hard drive.

You'll get a whole new install and your old data is in the old windows directory.

dudleycpa said:

I have done what CPUonNO2 has done at least twice; clean install of XP withOUT formatting the hard drive.

You'll get a whole new install and your old data is in the old windows directory.

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Hmm...you must have different versions of the install than me.

Because I can do a new install, format.

Or, install on top of the previous one, leaving everything exactly the way it was before.

It is a clean install with OUT formating the drive. When I did it I changed the default directory to something other than windows (I think I used win01).

dudleycpa said:

It is a clean install with OUT formating the drive. When I did it I changed the default directory to something other than windows (I think I used win01).

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Hmm, never checked what it did the windows directory, I reformatted clean a few days after.

I realize i'm nearly a week late with the "what happened" portion of my story, but here's what happened: I installed the drive as a slave on another machine, used recovery software to recover all the files, and re-loaded those files onto the original OS drive. At boot up i got a whole mess of errors due to corrupt registry files in the system32 directory. So my best guess is either the registry was corrupt before the reinstall, or was corrupted during the recovery. Either way I couldn't get it to boot, and a windows repair install didn't do anything to fix it. So I ended up doing a clean install after a format, re-creating the user account, re-installing the programs that were in the program files directory, and copying over all the personal data (my docs, etc...). Then as if to smite me for messing around in the first place, the system crashed again and failed all the seatools tests it had previously passed. So after a new drive and another fresh isntall, it's on it's way out the door.