Is registry affected by a repair install?


jimminy

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Is the registry affected by a repair install even if you specify to "keep files, apps, settings" ? I'm thinking it should be, else it certainly would loose a lot of your settings.
 
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A Windows repair install (in-place upgrade) preserves user profile data, meaning it generally does not overwrite or delete existing entries inside HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU)
 

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A repair install or in-place upgrade (it's actually the same process, but done for two different reasons) will only overwrite the reg entries that cover what Windows file versions are installed. They don't reset the other reg values that govern the live system's settings.

That's because an install image is only guaranteed to be correct about its own files, but it has no knowledge how your system is configured.

No amount of repair installs or DISM repairs can fix a corrupted Windows registry. Either you restore from a known good backup, or wipe the system and do a clean install. A clean install will exit with a set of initialized, first-time reg values.

If you have a corrupted user profile, one workaround is to create a brand new user account. And see if the problem was limited to your old user profile.
 

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