Registry UAC mistake...

[darkrendarius]

Hello experts,

I am in a very unfriendly situation, and need the help of the best...

Major mistakes made from frustration and stress/time...And lack of ability to do some tasks.. IE - No HD/system image Backup due to having no stroage devices, or DVD's to make with...
And the stress and quick actions taken by me made a HUGE idiotic mistake of NOT backing the registry before I did UAC changes....


After a LONG restart of Windows7 after just installing new software+driver,
I boot in SAFE mode after a Restore Point Failure

After the SAFE Boot I did roll back to the restore point made prior to the install...
And had to do manual registry removals for complete uninstall.
...and UAC changes were made....

Which in turn gave me my start of headaches to come...I think...
Which was having to take and apply UAC to drives and folders etc...

BUT Ive dealt with this many times...


And after days and still occurring common issues, - I realized the registry UAC changes were probably causing most of, if not all of the issues that I was still experiencing...SINCE the restore and uninstall...

my UAC access seems fine and I have control of most if not all that I should have... so thought I should try to reassign and check the registry UACs...

Now this is what Ive REALLY MESSED up tonight from lack of sleep, frustration, and not actually planning to change or alter the registry UACs.... I was just planning to take a peek at them to see what they were set as...

And my idiocy was to NOT make that manual registry BACKUP files... DUH DUMMY...
But also knew I had made a restore point 2-3 days ago I could use...

Now my problems is
Im currently in regedit.
I made changes and changed UACs..
And all was fine, till one point I had no names/groups/ listed and was temp unable to give ownership/permission to ADD a name/group to be able to change permissions...

When this happened I lost control and ability to access or do anything on the computer. No opening a file/folder/control panel/c:/ etc...
the right-click menu is minimal = New, Sort by, Refresh, Paste, Paste Shortcut

I did get the permissions changed and back to accessable, for all registry entries...
But Im too worried to close registry at the moment for fear of being unable to access it if I do... because Start/Run isnt working, just like everything else being unaccessable...
But I CAN access folders and files through the registry's import reg file option.

Im NOT sure if I could or was able to do that when there were no name/groups listed, but Im assuming I wouldnt have been able to.
I THINK I have reset and fixed my ability to access, and open control panel etc... but since I cant currently Im thinking its only because I need to close regedit first... or possibly restart cpu...

I am having problems locating and knowing forsure which reg HIVE file was made during the RESTORE point I made this week...

So I guess Im wondering if anyone could provide some info to me about;
- Possibility that all will be refreshed and accessable if I close regedit...?
- Can I OPEN possibly the control panel or whatever microsoft system file I need to, and RESTORE the system?? .. .. IF someone can tell me where to find it...?? ?

which Im unsure of because when I try to Open in a New Window - C:/ or a folder from the window I get from regedit-Import gives me the message of ""Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.
BUT it WILL open if I right-click and use Open Folder Location instead of Open in New Window... I am also able to open its Properties, and UAC info etc...

- So the right-click menu is full and working inside regedit's Import/Search, but right-click menu is still minimal on desktop etc... Double-Click is also opening files/folders from this menu/folder that is launched from regedits menu/"File"/Import"

Any info advice would be appreciated more than I could ever articulate...

- Should I close regedit? .. I am afraid of doing so and losing the only current way I can access and have the ability to access or change and correct where and what is needing it...

Thanks and sorry for being such an idiot,... I have worked through and fixed so much over the years on different systems, but age, time, stress, I dunno I would not have ended up in this situation 10 years or even 5 years ago... I forgot how amazingly annoying and problematic UAC Controls can be... And for me to ignore such a thing briefly as I did when dealing with something as essential as the registry.... Im just soooo disappointed and pissed at myself.

Thanks for your time and any help or advice you can provide me.

 

[AtlBo]

Just saying, but I would leave regedit open until you get a firm answer about what will happen. Sounds like you can piece together a fix there using whatever you are using now for the internet to find info you require. Good luck.

 

[darkrendarius]

Thanks for the reply and your agreement in that being the smart idea...

I figured this, and was attempting to do so, until the damn power shorted briefly...
It didnt go completely out but the house lights dimmed, and the lack of power was too much to keep the cpu on....
So it shut down on me....
And was stuck going to factory reset and losing close to 2TB of data... UGH... LOL...

What can you do sometimes?... Other than be ALWAYS vigilant regardless of experience, or times doing a task etc...

I had bad luck, but also caused this on myself for other reasons...
And at LEAST 3 things could have probably prevented this from occurring, or helped fix this...before the Power shortage...
So I blame myself completely, and maybe Microsoft a bit,- and the so called Security...And UAC. - that seems to punish most from newbs to advanced techs too...
But mostly its my own fault period...

Luckily most of it was just a lot of data I was acquiring to eventually transfer to a HD or Discs... And most can be retrieved again with time...

-------------------------------------------
Ill try to submit a follow up with more useful info others might benefit from...
as it contains a little tech info and tips some might find use of
and might serve as some use or reminder to people like myself, - that was WAY TOO WRONG...
And let different factors change and prevent me from doing and taking more precautions and proper actions and steps many times over....

 

[darkrendarius]

My current question is something I THINK I should assume is one way, BUT I cant seem to find what I thought would be EASY to find in Google....

Q - After a Factory Reset, are the detected Windows Updates that remained in Windows Update actually installed and work??.... Id think NO ??..??... And Not sure why and how they could be there after a Factory Reset....
Should I just uninstall/remove those OLD updates that are visible and showing as installed???...
Or are they actually installed and working?

Thx

 

[AtlBo]

Really bad luck. Too bad. The more things happen the stranger things seem to get for me, so I think I can understand what you are probably thinking about the power of all things.

As for strange, I had a similar experience this week. That's twice in 2 weeks I've had a similar experience to an OP. Mine wasn't so complicated...just registry corruption from conflicting security programs. Ended up replacing hive files from an old backup and was able to recover without losing functionality. Just had to reinstall a few programs.

I made a point to get a new image though considering the one I had was over a year old. Not much has changed on the system so the hive files worked OK.

Good luck accessing and retrieving the files...

 

[jr9]

If System restore isn't helping, I recommend seeing if you have any automatic registry backups in C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack that you can load back into your registry by clicking on them and adding to registry. This can also be done through the command line in System Recovery Options if Windows isn't loading. If you don't have a registry backup or a backup image you are looking at either an inplace or clean install of Windows. You can use a bootable live USB/DVD/CD like UBCD or FalconFour to perform your backups without Windows even being loaded.