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Is it possible to open the registry stored on an old hard drive?

Anonymous
2021-11-24T09:55:31+00:00

Can a command be written that opens/edits (%windir%\regedit.exe) a Win7 registry on an old hard drive without it reverting to the new registry instead? In other words drive J: instead of Drive C?

I still haven't given up hope of opening Corel Photo Shop 4.0 and running it on Windows 10

Especially since a companion program from the same setup disk works on the new computer.

I've developed the theory that there are keys (I hope that's the right term) that Corel needs in the Win 7 Registry that can be copied and pasted onto win10's registry that point to a missing .dll file that I've identified. The old computer was scrapped and recycled except for the still-working hard drive.

The problem becomes opening the registry off of an old but still working hard drive that's been turned into a usb drive plugged into my win10 machine.

The registry as I understand it is stored in *Windows\System32\Config* but I have no idea how to read what's in that file. I've even thought of searching for old registry backups on the old drive in case they might be easier to read and copy.

Old machine is an HP desktop that 10 1/2 years old bought in 2011 that died last month.

The only workable piece of it left is the hard drive.

I had Wim XP on it, that was upgraded to Win7

The software worked perfectly on Win7 even though it was written in 1997

The new machine is a new HP desktop running

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-11-24T17:19:51+00:00

    Hello JetGardner,

    Welcome to Microsoft Office Community Forum. Thank you for sharing your concern with us today and we hope that all is well.

    We understand that you need assistance in opening registry on an old drive. Let’s us check on this together and sort this out. Rest assured, we will do anything in our capability to assist you with your concern.

    Here is a troubleshooting step we can perform that can possibly fix the issue.

    1. First, from your Windows Explorer, configure it to show all files and folders.
    2. Find the registry files: For Windows 7 go to [x]:\users{username}\NTUSER.DAT (copy this location path from Windows Explorer this will be needed later)
    3. x stands for the driver letter of your old drive.
    4. One you found it, open upper case “NTUSER.DAT” and not “ntuser.dat”.
    5. Open Registry Editor
    6. Press Windows key + R
    7. On the run box type regedit then press on Enter.
    8. Select the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    9. Go to the FILE menu and choose LOAD HIVE
    10. Browse to the location of the old registry hive. If you copied the path from Windows Explorer, paste it in now.
    11. You'll get a dialog asking for a key name. This is just to identify the registry hive. You can use any name you want
    12. Find the key(s) you are looking for and Export (File menu).
    13. Open the exported .reg file in Notepad.
    14. If you are going to import it into the new computer, you'll need to edit it. At the very least, you'll need to use Find and Replace to replace Local_Machine with Current_User and remove the Old Computer key name.

    We look forward to your response. If you have other clarifications about this matter, you can get back to us by replying to this post.

    Sincerely,

    Carlo O.

    Microsoft Community

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Anonymous
    2021-11-25T06:37:18+00:00

    Click illustration twice to expand.

    Thank you for your time, but I reached a dead end rather early in the process...

    3 people found this answer helpful.
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  3. Anonymous
    2021-12-13T21:18:32+00:00

    Hello,

    Please do not hesitate to ask the community anytime just in case you have any questions in the future.

    Sincerely,

    CarTzy

    Microsoft Community

    1 person found this answer helpful.
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  4. Anonymous
    2021-11-25T17:32:51+00:00

    I am an administrator, but not sure how to open the command prompt as one.

    I can log onto the computer as myself or as "administrator" so I tried both ways.

    In the illustration below when I say I brought up my old user folder, I'm referring to the old "Jet Gardner" user in J:.

    1 person found this answer helpful.
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  5. Anonymous
    2021-11-25T14:51:46+00:00

    Hello JetGardner,

    Please open command prompt and run it as an administrator and paste the command below.

    D:\ attrib –r –a –s –h /s /d *.*

    Run the steps again and see if NTUSER.DAT will be visible.

    Sincerely,

    Carlo O.

    Microsoft Community

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