Repairing a damaged Windows NT4 registry hive
I was shown a defective HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System registry hive of a Windows NT 4.0 system today (resides in \WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM ). In order to get NT4 running again, it had to be repaired.
No need to reinstall NT4. In order to repair it, I did the following:
1) Loading the SYSTEM file in Windows XP Regedt32 via File/Load Hive (“Datei/Struktur laden…”). It told me that it was damaged and reparied some damaged pwars before plugging it in.
2) Exporting the hive to a new file via File/Export… (Datei/Exportieren…) by using the Save as type: Registry Hive Files (*.*) (“Registrierungsstrukturdaten (*.*)”) and saving it to a new file
3) Just replacing \WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM with the newly created hive file.
Worked like a charm, NT4 booted again.
System programmer