Is there a way to retieve my programs from windows.old?

[Chadders101]

Hello everyone!

I have just finished reinstalling windows 8 onto my computer and have found out about the existence of a file called "Windows.old" I have researched a bit about it and have found out that I can only retrieve my files, not my installed programs. This is a little bit of a complication because I have about two weeks of downloads put into my hard drive, considering my slow download speed and it would be very tedious to reinstall everything, also, seeing as the data is still on my computer, I would feel a bit silly.

So, What I really want to know is WHY I cant reinstate my programs. What makes them different to my standard files and why does that difference matter?

If I am missing something and there IS a way to move my programs to a useable place, could someone please tell me how?

Any help would be awesome, thanks.

 

[joex444]

Fresh Windows 8 install on a drive with an existing Windows install? Your programs modified the registry and there's no way to get that back, hence why you need to reinstall them. Files - like spreadsheets, music, etc., - do not use the registry so they can be easily restored.

 

[Chadders101]

Fresh Windows 8 install on a drive with an existing Windows install? Your programs modified the registry and there's no way to get that back, hence why you need to reinstall them. Files - like spreadsheets, music, etc., - do not use the registry so they can be easily restored.

The majority of my programs are games, after a little bit of searching I have found that I have to go to the launcher (Which I have to download again because I cant find it in my files) and click play, it locates the file in the windows.old file and plays it from there.

There are now two problems:

One, I have found that my wincows.old files get deleted after 28 days, I know there is a LOT of junk in these files and I need to find the entire download file for these games and extract them before then.

Two: I still cannot find the non-game programs like Windows Media Player. Do I just need to search around for those kinds of files as well? Or is there a way of finding them too?

 

[MassEffectIT]

You can recover programs from Windows.old, but not manually.
There is only one tool that I know of that can do this - here's a page about it:
How to recover programs and files from Windows.old

Hope this helps.