How do I restore the registry from my old computer so that The Sims 2 (plus expansions) will work on it?

Posted under Registry Repair Software by admin

I had a Compaq Presario computer. It was pretty good, but then it started crashing. I managed to backup the entire registry from that computer (along with pretty much everything on the hard drive) onto a USB hard drive.

The computer was sent to a repair shop and it was fixed… until I added the entirety of that backup registry and much of the old hard drive’s files onto the computer. It worked fine and I was glad to see that my neighborhood in The Sims 2 was still fine. I play a little, and then close, and under forgotten circumstances, I had to restart.

The computer got in a loop of booting up a few seconds into the Windows XP loading screen, and then suddenly restarting and doing it over again until I turn it off. Back to the repair shop, and the computer’s back and ready to go. I do the exact same thing, and send it back again…

Then, we just get a new computer. Runs fine… although I haven’t started work on restoring the backups for fear that it’ll all screw up again.

Except for one thing: The Sims 2. I got nostalgic and decided to try and get that working, so I get the trial of Registry Workshop and dive straight for the Sims 2 keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/EA GAMES. (I have all expansions, plus one Stuff Pack: the Family Fun Stuff Pack.) I manually copy each of the keys into the computer’s own registry, and notice that there’s also some more Sims 2-related things in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Electronic Arts/EA GAMES, that seems to be the CD keys entered during install. I copy those over as well.

I then copy the actual Sims 2 game files (and that of the expansion/Stuff packs) onto my computer, and when it finished, I started the Sims 2: Apartment Life executable… only to find an error message, saying that the game was not installed or some core files were removed.

Does anyone know how to fix this problem without having to reinstall? I don’t have all of the game discs any more.