Windows 10: "Windows.old.old" (Help requested)

The recovery image you posted has a sources folder....

Upload the hive to Onedrive or somthing and share - PM me the link.

BTW: I think the dot in windows.old is what's causing the error - remove that and try again.

 

This?

I'll see if I can upload the SOFTWARE hive.
EDIT: FYI the windows.old is default, I didn't change that but i'll try.
Also, I tried straight up uploading it but it says the file is in use for some reason, I'll try again by copying it.

EDIT 2: I can't copy it either. For some reason "C:\Windows.old\WINDOWS\System32\config\SOFTWARE" is being used. Obviously this will prevent me from renaming Windows.old as well.

 

Seems you will have to copy it offline - i.e from a USB boot Windows or Linux ... If you can't find an OEM folder I'll PM you instructions - which edition of Windows 7 did you have?

- but let's see if what we can extract from the hive first.

 

I do have this laptop dual booted with Mint, so that won't be a problem. Sadly I do not know which edition of Windows 7 I had. Its been a pretty long time ago since I used it. Also, I do have a "C:\Windows.old\WINDOWS\System32\config\RegBack" but I'm not sure if they would have the files needed. Should I get into mint & upload the file?

 

Yup, upload as much as you can.

 

Interesting note, so I have the windows 8 bootloader set up so that if I hit Mint it restarts & boots into grub, but grub displays mint and Windows 7 + Windows 7 Recovery. I'll try to upload at the moment. Also, In HDDRECOVERY\BIN\ there is a file called GETKEYSTATE.EXE. It is unable to be opened though, as it crashes upon trying to open it. I'm guessing you have to boot the recovery, which I don't know how.

What are you trying to find in the hive? Also, it is 100MB. I have awful internet speed, it'll take awhile.

I found this folder, maybe this is what you were talking about.
Windows 10\RecoveryImage\OEMInformation
Windows 10 represents the C drive if I were in windows. I as unable to open this file in windows (access is denied) even in elevated cmd.

Err... I have SOFTWARE uploading in mediafire (via mint) and it was at two percent.. now its at zero. I'll try and copy it and then upload it, but likely tomorrow because it is late where I live.

 

Then don't worry about the full file... load the hive in regedit (select HKEY_CURRENT_USER first - then select file->load hive) give it a name like backup - export backup\Microsoft\Windows NT and upload just that.

 

[/quote] I'm afraid you have a flawed detector, my friend*Smile
I downloaded the portable app to Win10-10049 yesterday and it downloaded nicely and worked perfectly without a peep from anything anywhere*Biggrin
A few moments ago I downloaded the standard app to Win8.1 (where it's already installed and works perfectly) and installed it again, without a peep, PUP, or pause and once again it works perfectly.
It has to be installed by administrator and Produkey displays Win8.1, IE and Wordviewer keys.
I have used those utilities for many years and not ashamed to say that I have more faith in Nirsoft and Sysinternals than I do in Virustotal *chuckle
YMMV

EDIT:
I just installed WSCC on Win10-10049, 64bit version and used a different approach to obtaining the app *Smile
Using Bing I searched wscc, all lower case, and it delivered a list of colleges, businesses and a link for KLS-Software.
Downloaded WSCC and installed all 264 utilities it offers. No peep, PUP nor pause again and when running Produkey it shows a key for Internet Explorer and Win10TP. Nicely done as usual *chuckle

 

"Load hive" is greyed out when HKEY_CURRENT_USER is selected. If I try to use "Load hive" in either HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or HKEY_USERS after gives me "Cannot Load (hive destination): Error while loading hive. Also this is a copied SOFTWARE. In Mint I took (copied) the windows.old software & put it in C:\hive\ folder so that hopefully it wouldn't be in use. I'll try the original now, and then RegBack.
EDIT: The uncopied one worked, but I can only export it as txt or .reg (I chose reg) is that okay?

 

Thats's fine - can you also let me have these keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\ACPI\RSDT

Backup\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Registration

 

Sent.

 

Is it worth mentioning I have a folder from win 7 when I used Norton 360 called 'N360_BACKUP'? It is an extremely large folder, but I have absolutely no idea what is in it or how to open the files in it.

 

I haven't use norton for yonks - perhaps others have experience with that, but a clean install would be better IMHO.

I note the old digital river lnks have been removed and only valid retail keys are allowed to download the iso now...even COA keys don't work here Microsoft Software Recovery..

 

Alright thanks to Superfly I have windows 7 ultimate running, but I have one more question. Is it ok to let the two partitions communicate? Or should I remove the drive letter to each non active windows in each (i.e. in windows 7 removing the windows 10 drive letter - visa versa)

 

I would just leave as is - the only thing I do is disable hibernate on Windows as it interferes with a Linux dual boot.