Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade  

Dan,

Wisewiz said:

Will this repair undo my TenForums registry tweaks?

1 If you use this procedure with the ISO of a new Version, as many of us do, then the new Version might change some Registry entries back to their defaults.
- It's the new Version rather than the Repair install [In-place update] procedure that does this and it would have the same effect if you used Windows update to handle updating to the new Version.

Wisewiz said:

If so, can I restore them all at once from a saved file? Tomcat suggested (in this thread) saving all of my registry tweaks to a single .reg file, but I have no idea how that should be done, and whether restoring the tweaks would work in a "repaired" registry.

2 I agree with Tomcat that it can be well worth keeping the .reg files for all your tweaks in a single folder together with links to the sources you used to do them [such as links to the TenForumsTutorials you used].
It is always useful to check the relevant tutorial before restoring any tweaks because they can change over time [as MS changes where it saves things in the Registry for new Versions].

3 You could put all your tweaks into a single giant .reg file but that would hinder adapting to changes suggested in amended tutorials.

- You'll see how to do it if you drop one of your .reg files into a Notepad window. Do this for a few of them and you'll see their simple & consistent pattern. You'll see the same pattern in .reg files you create by Exporting a Registry Key in .reg format [which is the only useful export format - never use the .txt export format].
- Even though I have more than several tweaks, I have only ever stuffed any into a single .reg file if they are so closely related that I would always review them as a whole rather than singly. The only example I can think of off the top of my head is my set of tweaks for removing entries from the context menu, New section.

4 Unlike Paul, I do not make any distinction between tweaks that add or change Registry entries and those that remove them.

- .reg files are "merged" rather than "run".
- When you use a .reg file, its contents are "merged" into the Registry. That's just the terminology in common use and should not concern you at all.

Denis

Thanks, Denis. @Try3

I'm repairing 21H1 with a 21H1 ISO on CD. The problem of losing tweaks should be minimized.

Dan

- - - Updated - - -

@ Brink @ Try3 @ Paul Black

Try3 said:

... I agree with Tomcat that it can be well worth keeping the .reg files for all your tweaks in a single folder together with links to the sources you used to do them [such as links to the TenForumsTutorials you used].
It is always useful to check the relevant tutorial before restoring any tweaks because they can change over time [as MS changes where it saves things in the Registry for new Versions].

Good advice, and fully taken ... from now on.

You could put all your tweaks into a single giant .reg file but that would hinder adapting to changes suggested in amended tutorials.

I don't think I want to do that, for the very reason you suggest. I've combined .reg files successfully in the past, but after the fact I realized I'd spent more time copying and pasting than it would take to merge all the .reg files separately.

I've finished, with the generous and knowledgeable help of you friends. It went perfectly. So far as I can tell, my tweaks have been preserved except for the one that got the folders out of my Navigation pane and whatever I used (it may not have been a .reg file) to get entirely rid of OneDrive. OD was back in File Explorer and in my Start menu, and it took a few secs to get rid of all of the traces. I've never used OD, because I have more than ample space on my Google Drive and my iCloud Drive to store anything I want "clouded."

The main (happy happy happy) thing to report is that this simple In-place Repair install fixed every single glitch I had seen on this old PC. (Some of these I had reported on TF, but fixes for them had not surfaced, even though several members suggested possibilities.) They're all history now, and good riddance to them.

Thanks again, friends.

Dan

Hello @Wisewiz,

Wisewiz said:

The main (happy happy happy) thing to report is that this simple In-place Repair install fixed every single glitch I had seen on this old PC. (Some of these I had reported on TF, but fixes for them had not surfaced, even though several members suggested possibilities.) They're all history now, and good riddance to them.

Thanks again, friends.

Excellent news, I am glad that we could help.

An in-place Repair Install left me with six easy-to-fix changes, in addition to the Windows.old folder.

1. My edited, stripped-down WinX menu was back to the default list of too many useless items. WinXEditor took care of that.
2. All of the default Folders were back in my Navigation pane and in the This PC screen. A Brink tutorial here took them away again. Thanks, Brink!
3. [EDITED TO REMOVE A MISTAKEN STATEMENT. I reported, in error, that the repair had altered the disk styles of my SSDs. It hadn't. I was confusing my two office computers.]
4. [EDITED TO REMOVE ANOTHER MISTAKEN STATEMENT] I had deleted the Recovery partition on my main system, not the system I repaired. The Recovery partition on the repaired system was untouched.
5. My Macrium Reflect context menu options were gone when I tried to un-mount an MR image I had finished examining. (This has happened to many computers after major updates of the OS.) I had to re-register the two critical .dll files in an Admin command window, using regsvr32 commands. Breeze.
6. My custom-made Recycle Bin icon was replaced by the generic Windows 10 version. Themes > Desktop icon settings made that right again.

All in all, a happy experience that repaired a lot of small glitches and a few larger ones, and the process of reverting the four unwanted changes took all of twenty minutes.

Wisewiz said:

3. My two SSDs, which I had changed from MBR to GPT (to try to accommodate Windows 11) reverted to MBR. OK. I have no compelling reason to change them back, because this PC will never run Windows 11.

I hope you don't mind my saying it but #3 is so surprising that I think you have misinterpreted something somewhere along the way.

Denis

Try3 said:

I hope you don't mind my saying it but #3 is so surprising that I think you have misinterpreted something somewhere along the way.
Denis

I don't mind your saying it at all. I was absolutely astonished when I first opened Macrium Reflect and found that my two SSDs were labelled MBR, after I had carefully changed both to GPT in order to change from Legacy to UEFI boot and set TPM 1.2 and Secure Boot on (all this to see whether this old beast would support W11). I promptly went to Disk Mgt and confirmed that both were MBR. What???

This morning when I read your incredulous reply to my #3 point, I realized that I had blundered in my reporting. I had concentrated on my main system for a couple of days, and prepared it for the PC-check utilities, with an eye to trying the dev build on it. Then a new glitch on my secondary system alarmed me into concentrating on it, and it was the secondary that I repaired yesterday, with my changes to the primary system still firmly in mind.

The repair did nothing to the partition styles of the SSDs on system 2. It was system 1 that had GPT disks. I'll see whether I can still edit that post -- which was otherwise accurate -- to remove that point. If I can't, the post will stand as testimony to the easy confusion of an old man with lots on his mind.

Thanks for questioning.

Matthew Wai said:

I have written my Registry tweaks and personal settings into CMD files. I just double-click on the files to import them. You may do the same.

It's a good idea, well received. Thank you.

Dan

yesir360 said:

Do you know what happens if secure boot is not disabled? Does this in place upgrade fail on some step?

It's more of a precaution to prevent the possibility of Windows not booting afterwards if something should mess with the secure boot key, and having to clean install if so.