I was cleaning up my registry as instructed in the latest Waves release, and I accidentally deleted the wow6432... instead of the Waves folder within it.
Now my laptop boots in a weird wingding-esque language and I cant log in to do a system restore.

ive tried restoring while booting but that wont come up either.

im running windows 8.1 on a 2012 Vaio S

please help

 

Have you tried System Refresh from Win8.1 DVD?

Wow6432Node is very important key, that stores all 32bit OS-related settings, and also x86 software specific values.

 

system refresh should reinstall missing windows parameters without deleting your installed software

when messing about with the registry always worth creating a backup (use export) then you can import it back if problems occur, and ALWAYS double check the key or folder before changing or deleting it

 

Ended up taking my SSD out, using the sata to usb cable it came with it to make a backup of recent projects, reinstalled windows.

 

sorry to hear that,you should've waited a bit longer, *yes*

anyways if you get a copy of acronis and back up your pc after you installed every-thing back again
you wont have to worry about stuff like this again,
there are a few copys going around,

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/pc-backup/

 

Its fine, everything turned out better.

I reinstalled majourity of what I need, and I have an extra 20gb free compared to before, and the number of tasks in task manager is 66, before it was 111.

It didnt take that long to get back up and running, I think I reinstalled windows 8 installed all the sony drivers, got FL and S1 running with Waves and omnisphere and other essentials in about 3 hours. I keep a backup of all drivers and the installation files of what I use (so if AZ ever goes down hit me up lol Windows x64 only tho)

Im just grateful that I spent the extra 7$ to get the sata to usb cable when I bought my crucial SSD

What I learned was, when CCleaner asks you if you want to back up your registry, always say yes *yes*

Question: If I make a recovery disk at this point, when I go to use it, will Omnisphere, chrome, Fl... ect be installed automatically?

 

with acronis you can do a few different backups
full backup will restore your pc with all your stuff.
there is also clone disk what will work as well and if your hard drive goes you can use it to restore
your pc on a new hard drive,

CCleaner will only backup the files it removes not your full reg
you need to open regedt32.exe then go to the computer icon up top ,right click it and export to desktop
so you can find it easy,the reg file can be as big as 500 + mb
so use winrar to pack it and it will only be 20 mb then keep a copy on a usb stick ,disk,even on your phone as backup.


you can use these to speed up your pc,

http://www.tune-up.com/

and

http://www.yamicsoft.com/

on my music pc i have about 25 tasks in task manager
on my web laptop is about the same as you 60 +

 

Glad to hear MYCbeats
*yes*

 

My advice is install Revo. It makes registry backups for you as well so even if Windows System Restore doesn't have restore points you can still get your system back up and running. Or you can also do it manually but then you have the added bonus of an awesome uninstaller.