Windows 7 My Computer's Got me by the Balls!

[Perry Clitheroe]

Hello All! I'll just give you guys the details and see if any of you can solve this little puzzle I've created. Needless too say, I made a few stupid mistakes along this road.

1) Asus Laptop Model UL50VT with Windows 7 Home Premium.
2) Hard Drive crashes dies, send it in and get it replaced.

3) Several months after getting the Hard Drive replaced (Yesterday) I noticed that my D drive had 350GB of memory as compared to about 150GB in my C Drive. This was a problem considering my C drive was nearly full.

4) I decide to just put new files to the D Drive and that I will copy files over to the D drive to use it as my primary driver. I use Yahoo!Answers as my reliable source of information on all things registry. After following the instructions that I can no longer find, I edited several files in the registry, believing myself to have changed the primary drive from C to D.

5) ^^ The above instructions given were most likely from an epic troll. Everytime I open any System 32 file I get an error that Windows cannot C:/Windows/System32/Application I tried to open/etc... This includes, sadly, my regedit application.

6) I copied my System32 folder over to my D drive and attempted to open the application from over there, but it has not worked.

7) Many files on my computer are unable to be found by windows, System32 is not the only case. It appears to be somewhat random.

8) I tried as a cop-out way to fix this to create a new User Account, and that also failed... It simply will not open the Control Panel section for creating a new account.

9) Lastly... and perhaps this was my stupidest mistake of all... I never created a recovery disk. Was simply lazy. So ya...

Any ideas? I hope somebody here enjoys trying to solve puzzles, lol.

 

[Saltgrass]

Do you remember exactly what you did in the registry if you check this Microsoft site that explains?

Hopefully you can put it back. If not, take a picture using the snipping tool of the registry key involved and attach it using the paperclip.

The answer to your question is just to expand the C: partition. You will probably need to delete the D: partition first because is it hard to move the leading edge of a partition.

 

[patcooke]

There seems to be two main sources of problem - registry changes and moving of files - you cannot just move system files from one place to another. The structure you started with was a good one - 150GB for drive C and 350GB for a data drive. Your initial mistake was to use drive C for storing all your data files, documents etc. It is good practice to keep drive C for just operating system and installed applications programs. On that basis 150GB is probably more than enough (my C drive is 50 gig and I have 10 gig spare on it). All your data (docs, pics, movies, downloads etc) should be stored on another drive such as your drive D. It does not help that Microsoft and hence many applications default to storing in "My documents, My Music, My downloads . . ." and so on. I never use any of them Separate storage for software (system and apps) and data has been an industry standard for years and it is good practice. Given the uncertain state of your system I would get all the data backed up and run a full system recovery getting you back to a clean system and implement the above practice.

Another major advantage is that you will have a relatively small system drive and can use something like Acronis True Image to make a regular backup image of your system drive which you can keep on your data drive. If and when you have a major problem on your system which would have required a reinstall you can run Acronis True Image to recover your system including all apps, config files etc and get your entire system back in about 20 minutes instead of a few days. If you want to make your system even more resilient and easy to recover you can save addition copies (I save the most recent three) on an external drive. That way you can get your system back even if your hard drive totals.

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