Question Im an idiot. Help me un-idiot please!

[damian.mcclean]

Greetings.

As stated, I'm an idiot. I went into the Reg files on my computer and deleted something important. I know its important as my pc loops on start up.
To add to the fun i have no back ups or restore point (because idiot). The file i deleted was HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software WOW6432Node . I believe thats some default file covering all sorts of things : / . I have attempted all the buttons and some things off guides in command prompt but no success . Anyone have the wonder knowledge as to how i can sellotape this information back into the mystical forest whence it came?

 

[Barty1884]

Ouch. Obviously too late to state the obvious but #1. Always have a back-up before making any major changes & #2. Do not mess around with/delete registry files you know nothing about.

You might be able to patch it back together creating bootable media, booting from it and selecting "repair"....
Follow this guide, until you see "install now".... bottom left of that is "repair this computer", and it's fairly self explanitory from there.
https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

 

[Darkbreeze]

You can't. If you can't get into Windows, there is no way to fix that short of either doing a recovery or clean install.

If you have system restore enabled you can try that, but don't hold your breath because I've found it to rarely work well.

A clean install or in place upgrade are the better options.

https://www.geeksinphoenix.com/blog...-windows-10-by-doing-an-in-place-upgrade.aspx

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[onespeedbiker]

You can access the registration editor from a command prompt, but unless you have all the subfolders, it's doubtful it will help.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, yeah, you CAN, but honestly I'm not sure that's useful advice to give somebody who thought it was a good idea to delete registry entries in the first place without knowing what they were doing.

These are all options, I'm just not sure that they are appropriate options for THIS thread.

4 Ways to Edit Windows Registry Offline [Without Regedit]

Many years ago when I was still a novice in computers, I accidentally disabled userinit.exe from startup thinking that it was spyware using the

www.raymond.cc

And of course you are right that in order to do anything about it you really need to know what was removed and what all the supporting strings were as well.

 

[onespeedbiker]

You can also just type regedit at a WinPE command prompt.

 

[Darkbreeze]

And then......................

 

[onespeedbiker]

Exactly

 

[damian.mcclean]

hey guys, thanks for the quick responses; Really appreciate the effort! Im not 100% on what i did overall but basically did the media tool thing, got lucky that there was JUST enough space on my SSD to install windows again (28mb remaining after) whilst keeping the old files, moved the windows.old to an external so that i had some space to play with and then copied the files and programs back. Most things (almost everything) is back up and running in the proverbial mystical forest and I don't intend to go playing in the reg files again without a hardhat and gloves.

thanks again for your time, you guys are great!

 

[USAFRet]

Any 'tutorial' that involves editing the Registry, and does not start with "First, make a backup of the Registry and know how to recover that"...should be ignored completely.

 

[Barty1884]

Any 'tutorial' that involves editing the Registry, and does not start with "First, make a backup of the Registry and know how to recover that"...should be ignored completely.

Any 'tutorial' that doesn't repeatedly smack you over the head with this advice in it's first couple of lines/paragraphs is asking for trouble.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Good deal that you got it going again and for being a good sport when we agreed that it was a knucklehead moment.