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Hi, all
So recently I've had my main drive fail to boot completely and had to reinstall Windows on a new drive. However I was able to recover Program Files, Program Files (x86), files from Users (including AppData), and Program Data which I took from the drive that failed to boot and put it into my new windows installation (Windows 10 Pro). Upon reorganising everything and transferring files, I've noticed in Programs and Features as well as Apps & Features many apps from my storage units (C:, D:, F:, G:) were missing even though they were installed on this computer they work fine if I directly open them from their folders, but I cannot search for them on the search bar nor do I have the option to uninstall them from Programs and Features or Apps & Features if I desire to.
https://answers-afd.microsoft.com/static/images/image-not-found.jpg
I have reinstalled important programs such as Office, Nvidia and Adobe applications and that fixes the issue fine, however many of those apps that I've transferred over or are inherited from other drives are games from Steam or disc copies of programs and therefore would require reinstalling over 50 different programs just for them to appear if I were to search for them. I have heard that this is a registry issue and I understand it is risky to mess with registries like this but I would like to know where can I find the registeries for all my programs from my prior drive? browsing around I believe it's HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall. However, I cannot access my older drive as it's not a C: drive at this moment so I would also like to know how I can access this registry and carefully put it in my current registries. I have made a restore point just in case. If it is not possible I'll likely have to spend all day reinstalling programs.
Thank you for your assistance
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Hi RJoseph_7,
I'm afraid it is not possible to fix this without risk of making the registry unstable. However, if you want to see the apps in your taskbar search bar, you can make shortcuts of every executable and save them at your desktop, for example.
As for the games, re-scanning or adding again the Steam library from Steam settings should avoid having to reinstall them.
I hope this helps!
Hi RJoseph_7,
I'm an Independent Advisor and I'm happy to help you.
Programs may make a lot of changes in the registry, it is not possible to manually track and restore the records.
If you want to keep your app settings, you should backup these two folders:
Then, reinstall your programs one by one, they will detect their respective data folder inside those two.
Let me know if this helps!
Hi Francisco,
Thank you for your response. I have transferred over AppData prior to this post onto my new drive which works perfectly and does keep my apps settings. But of course I cannot search for them or view them in Programs and Features or Apps & Features. (example below)
Is there any possible way to avoid having to reinstall all programs one by one? Thanks!
