Windoze over Windows Repair

I´m going to geek out here a bit - but it´s for a public service. I just fixed a problem I´ve been having with my main graphics workstation after looking for a solution for over a year and I thought I´d share. If you have ever installed Windows over top of another Windows (after a motherboard upgrade or serious system crash etc...) the silly thing corrupts its own registry in a very hidden way - here is how you Fix it...

The Problem:
When you install Windows over top of itself (like I did) it keeps a lot of the old registry settings and creates new duplicate ones - at this point you´re probably asking WHY - I know I did... then I remembered it´s Micro$oft we´re talking About here and dropped my Line of questioning... In any regard, these duplicate entries have a security setting based on the old installation not the new one. So you can´t actually access them and neither can the system. This causes explorer to slow down, and some other programs to not work entirely. I was trying to use Smart Sound for example and just couldn´t on this machine - in fact, their tech support were the ones that alerted me to the root of the problem in the first place, but at the time they didn´t have a solution.

The Solution:
Seems obvious right - just delete the duplicate entries or change their security settings - Ah, but this is Windows - so not even the administrator can change administrator settings every time (tut tut... don´t go to the question I know you´re thinking About - Micro$oft, remember...) Anyway you can´t touch them manually but thanks to a problem in the Adobe Flash Support forum I found a little Micro$oft tool called SubInACL (SubInACL.exe):

SubInACL enables administrators to do the following:

• Display security information associated with files, registry keys, or services. This information includes owner, group, permission access control list (ACL), discretionary ACL (DACL), and system ACL (SACL).
• Change the owner of an object.
• Replace the security information for one identifier (account, group, well-known security identifier (SID)) with that of another identifier.
• Migrate security information About objects. This is useful if you have reorganized a network´s domains and need to migrate the security information for files from one domain to another.

...basically - exactly what we need. They even include a little script in the Adobe forum that blasts through the entire registry and adds the Current administrator as an owner of every reg key - again exactly what we need. Here is the code for that - just save it in a file called reset.cmd in the same directory as subinacl.exe (usually c:Program FilesWindows Resource KitsTools)

@echo off

Echo =========================
Echo Processing Registry Permission. Please wait...
Echo =========================
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=system=f

Echo =========================
Echo Processing Folder Permission. Please wait...
Echo =========================
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=system=f

Echo =========================
Echo Finished.  
Echo =========================
pause
exit



Once you run the command (which takes About 20 minutes), restart the machine. I also ran Registry Mechanic to do a final clean-up (it deleted About 1000 entries - all the duplicates) the end result is that Smart Sound works and everything on my machine is About 20% faster!

sure, it´s an odd circumstance - but I´m sure there are others out there with similar problems and I hope this helps.

---