Vista - tried to do a vista repair install - lost user settings, installed programs etc.

ok, i wanted to try that, but its going to fail at step 1...

4.In the Hard Disk Drives area, double-click Local Disk (C, and then determine whether the Windows.OLD folder exists.

Important If the Windows.OLD folder does not exist, you cannot follow the steps in this article to restore the previous Windows installation to this computer.

5.Right-click the Windows.OLD folder.

6.Windows Vista will determine the size of the folder after several seconds. Determine whether the Windows.OLD folder is smaller than the free space that is available for Local Disk (C in step 2.

Note If the Windows.OLD folder is two times as large as the free space that is available for the Local Disk (C entry, you may be unable to restore the previous Windows installation.

C: is a 25gb partition - Windows.old is 20gb large, Windows is 5gb large - besides the fact that is kind of weird, that i still got 531mb empty (25gb - 20gb (windows.old) - 5gb (windows) - 143mb (users) - 400mb (programs) should be ending in minus... ), i dont have enough free space on C: - what a bull****...

is it possible to do the steps, when windows.old is on another partition?
actually im testing to work with command prompt... found out the move command and succesfully moved a folder... right way to do it?
again, i dont want to make another mistake, so im just asking...

current i got the problem, that i cant move a folder from one partition to another - i always got the message: "Access denied"

ok, i will make it short, because im tired...

i tried to restore via the windows.old and it worked... currently all programs are running and everything makes a stable impression to me...

im going to post tomorrow again... but thanks to dragor and brink...

Your welcome TaZz. I'm happy to hear that it worked for you.

Get some rest. Hear from you later.

Shawn

ok... still everything working - nice!

as i mentioned 2 posts before, i was a little confused, because i didnt understand why i would so much free space for the restore - basically it was just renaming and moving folders... so i gave it a shot and it worked for me...
one problem was, that the programdata folder is invisible - i couldnt rename or move them ---> without that, eg. kaspersky wasnt starting...
so i had to create a new ProgramData.Vista folder, move all folders from ProgramData to the new one and then moving the ProgramData folders in Windows.old to the on C:\ and that worked out...

currently i have one problem left - i cant delete the following folders:
- ProgramFiles.Vista (the programs from the old new vista)
- Windows.Vista (the old new vista)

i already tried to delete them in safe mode, but didnt work... any hints?

TaZz,

Since you have the 32 bit Vista, you can see if using the free program Unlocker will help allow you to delete them.

UNLOCKER 1.8.7 BY CEDRICK 'NITCH' COLLOMB

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Glad I could help...
As for the undeletable folders, you could also try running an elevated command prompt [Start > Type cmd and then right click cmd.exe n click on run as admin] and in your C: drive type this:
attrib -S ProgramFiles.Vista
attrib -S Windows.Vista

The 's' in -S has to be capital or else it wont work. Then just delete them either from explorer or command line by "rd <folder name>" command