Help needed on re-installing Capture NX2

[ColinM]

I recently had problems with my Windows 10 PC, couldn't get it to boot or get the MS recovery tools to work:
I ended up having to do a fresh install of Win10.

Whilst my data was backed up and I was able to make copies of \Program Files, I don't think I have a copy of my Capture NX2 licence key any more.

A casual attempt to try & run Capture NX2 from the backed-up copy of the program files didn't seem to work.

• I'm guessing it's possible to find the installation files online, but does anyone have any advice on how I can get it going again?
  
• As an alternative, I have steered clear of View NX and CNX-D up till now as the early versions of them were much less capable than Capture.
  Is that no longer the case?

[Bjørn Rørslett]

The registry would contain the required information ... A good idea is to make backups of that vital part of Windows.

I always make a copy of any licensing key(s) and store that on an independent NAS. Plus the installation file(s).

[ColinM]

The registry would contain the required information

Thanks Bjorn.
My backup regime concentrated on my user data. I must admit I'd not heard of Win10 breaking following a Windows update, but once I started Googling this, I found many examples of other people with similar problems.

Sadly the many options built in to recover from this didn't work for me, with Windows saying it was unable to repair the startup and the Win10 installation image only offering the option to retain my data if I ran it from a working & running copy of Windows 10.

Luckily this makes a copy of some of the folders from the original Win10 installation. It looks like I may have some of these, but I need to do more digging to work out how to make use of the data as the current Win10 Regedit won't open them

[Bjørn Rørslett]

These "files" are what Windows calls hives. You need to import them into the current registry. Run REGEDIT from an administrator command line.

The SOFTWARE hive is usually the most valuable when merging old and new data.