Restoring windows XP reg using recovery console

Alright, I plan on messing with my registry to change the default folder for my documents and settings. Since this is a risky operation from all the sensitive files in that folder I want to backup my reg just in case.

I can't use system restore because I don't have enough space on my main partition (hence why I want to move the folder) so I used a program called registry assistant to back up my registry into a .reg file on a separate hard drive.

Now, what I need to know is, if by the off chance my computer can't even boot up in safe mode, is there a way to restore this reg file back into my registry using the recovery console.

 

I would recommend moving just My Documents. You can go to it's properties and change where the files are stored.
If you are going to proceed with your plan, use Erunt to make a copy of your hives instead of a reg file. This might be of use to you.

 

Yeah, I'm going to have to proceed to try and change the entire folder, because I moved the My Documents folder but things keep trying to store in the application data folder in documents and settings. There's about 2 gigs being held up in there. The second link you gave me to microsoft doesn't work on OEM versions of windows, which is what I have, so I'll try out out Erunt, thanks.

My other option here is to completely reinstall windows and change the installation folder before it installs. I'm not exactly looking forward to that but it might be my only option if this doesn't work.

 

2 gigs huh? I bet it's temp/cache files. Clean them out. Adobe and Java have caches there. If you use those products, those caches are safe to delete. You can also use CCleaner to clean out some of the junk.

If it's stuff on your desktop, you can move your desktop to another drive with Tweak UI. It's under My Computer, Special Folders.

 

Well I've moved the temp/cache folders to my bigger partition, it's the Application Data folder, where programs store information, such as games do for save files. I did a little more digging in the folder and I realized spore is taking up 1 gig of it, that's retarded. If I could find a way to change the spore settings maybe I could avoid changing critical system settings.

I like changing the desktop idea, I think I'm going to do that now.

 

Alright, I've solved the problem.

Some system folders you can just move and the registry will automatically change. I was perplexed that Microsoft would implement something so simple and thought there was a catch, but it was that easy. So I moved the desktop folder and that freed up a little space.

Then the big daddy, the Application Data folder. This folder does the same thing, just moving it will change it in the registry. However, for me there were some files that I couldn't move in there. So I copied it over to the new directory and changed the registry value manually. However, some programs have "%userprofile%\Application Data" or whatever hardcoded into it rather than what windows associates it to. So I created a dummy folder for these programs and used Junction Link Magic to create an NTFS junction link to my new location.

So if anyone else has this problem there's the solution I've found, I've been using it for a few days with no issues, hopefully I can continue to use it. Thanks for the help.