Lost my MBR and system disk partition. Had my data backed up before but could not restore automatically.

Reinstalled a new WINNT system, a few utilities and manually copied the programs and documents that were backed up. I'd like to restore the system to its original state, if it is possible. What files should I copy from the old (WINNT) operating system so that I can recreate the old system without having to reintalled te original programs.
Should I, or can I -
  Merge or import the old Registry.
  Simply replace the system file in \WINNT\config\
  What about the software, SAM and SECURITY files in there ?
  How do I treat the *.DAT files in there too?

And what about the sub-folders & files in the Documents and Settings folder?   

 

forget your idea - just copy back data and reinstall programs fresh. Most program (I assume you mean folders in 'program files') need more than that to run - registry entries and system files.

I also don't understand the nature of your backup - it sounds like you have the whole drive - so is it not an image you can restore? And 'lost mbr and system partition' - what does that mean? (I've never seen an mbr get lost - only missing if problem with drive or missing/corrupted because some low level edit/restore feature has been used by someone who doesn't know what they're doing (in my case, it was me!)

But bottom line is if you haven't got an image to restore, then trying to recreate your installation will take up lots of time, and will only be partially successful at best (and might leave you with a crippled system).

In that case what is a good program to create and maintain a disk image to be used in a failure condition, since backup [*.bkf] files seems to be notoriously useless. If I am reading you correctly they are only good for restoring data, my previous experience seems to confirm this.

Thanks again