Lost a hard drive, how to check what was on it ?

[John Anderton]

Hi all,

I've just had a hard drive die. It wasn't backed up because it didn't
contain any important data but what it did contain was a number of
applications. I can re-install them easily enough but I'd quite like to
find out first what references there are in the registry etc. to those
apps.

Is there any easy way of scanning the registry to list all references
to, say, the E: drive ?

I know I can do a simple find but I'd rather use something more
sophisticated that will give, say, a tree diagram highlighting every
reference to the lost drive.

Does anybody know of anything relevant, please ?

Cheers,

John

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

John

Take a look through your start menu to see what is no longer present..

Are you going to re-instate a drive in place of the dead one, because if you
are, and you re-install all of the programs, registry will stay as it is
without any intervention from you..

Also, if you re-install anywhere else, the registry keys pointing to a
location will be changed.. there is no separate part of the registry that
just holds details of drive E..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User


"John Anderton" > wrote in message
ups.com...
> Hi all,
>
> I've just had a hard drive die. It wasn't backed up because it didn't
> contain any important data but what it did contain was a number of
> applications. I can re-install them easily enough but I'd quite like to
> find out first what references there are in the registry etc. to those
> apps.
>
> Is there any easy way of scanning the registry to list all references
> to, say, the E: drive ?
>
> I know I can do a simple find but I'd rather use something more
> sophisticated that will give, say, a tree diagram highlighting every
> reference to the lost drive.
>
> Does anybody know of anything relevant, please ?
>
> Cheers,
>
> John
>

[John Anderton]

Mike Hall (MS-MVP) wrote:
> John
>
> Take a look through your start menu to see what is no longer present..

That could take a while (I've got a lot of applications on other drives
as well) which is why I was hoping for a (partially) automated
solution.
Thinking about it, I may just knock up a quick script to check the
properties for each start menu entry and list any with "E:\ . . . " as
the path, if that's feasible (it's been a while since I did any windows
scripting)
>
> Are you going to re-instate a drive in place of the dead one, because if you
> are, and you re-install all of the programs, registry will stay as it is
> without any intervention from you..

I am going to re-instate a drive (and mirror it this time since two
drives are now cheaper than the original one) but I thought it would be
helpful to know everything that was on it so I can be sure I've
re-installed everything, rather than find out at some critical point in
the future that the one application I need *right now* got missed :-)

>
> Also, if you re-install anywhere else, the registry keys pointing to a
> location will be changed.. there is no separate part of the registry that
> just holds details of drive E..
>
I realise that, which is one reason why I'd prefer not to use the
"find" command to scan the registry (and wear my finger out in the
process)

Cheers,

John