Disappearing registry

  • Thread starter Thread starter Simon Hart
  • Start date Start date
S

Simon Hart

Hi folks.

i've got one here that is confusing the hell out of me. The machine is a
standard box with an AMD Athlon 1800 in the middle. The rest is mainstream
hardware, nothing unusual in it. It's running W2K professional.

Now, this is an intermittent fault but incredibly annoying. You power the
machine on and it goes through POST and starts booting 2K as normal. Then...
BLUE SCREEN... the registry is corrupt or not writeable or just plain gone!
This has happened twice since installing 2K a week ago. Repair with an
emergency disk sorta works but not completely. After repair, if you try to
create a dial-up connection, when you go to give the connection a name, e.g.
"Xtra", you get a message that the name must contain a non-blank and mustn't
start with a period. Dunno about you but "Xtra" is within those rules. :)

Anyone seen this behaviour before and found a cure for it? I'm tearing my
hair out here!

Thanks folks!

Simon.
 
Simon said:
Hi folks.

i've got one here that is confusing the hell out of me. The machine is a
standard box with an AMD Athlon 1800 in the middle. The rest is mainstream
hardware, nothing unusual in it. It's running W2K professional.

Now, this is an intermittent fault but incredibly annoying. You power the
machine on and it goes through POST and starts booting 2K as normal. Then...
BLUE SCREEN... the registry is corrupt or not writeable or just plain gone!
This has happened twice since installing 2K a week ago. Repair with an
emergency disk sorta works but not completely. After repair, if you try to
create a dial-up connection, when you go to give the connection a name, e.g.
"Xtra", you get a message that the name must contain a non-blank and mustn't
start with a period. Dunno about you but "Xtra" is within those rules. :)

Anyone seen this behaviour before and found a cure for it? I'm tearing my
hair out here!

Thanks folks!

Simon.
Click to expand...
It simply looks like your registry is damaged beyond repair. Unless you
use, as I do, a utility like Lifesaver (http://www.lifesaverbackup.com/)
or have some other way to restore a good registry backup, I am afraid
you will have to do a full reinstall, unless some other guy here has a
better idea...
 
Hi, Simon.

Is that a completely blank blue screen? Or a BSOD full of codes? If a
BSOD, what are the codes, verbatim?

If your Registry is merely damaged, then an in-place upgrade should
re-install Win2K while preserving your installed applications and data. If
the Registry is gone - or damaged in a way that the in-place upgrade won't
work - then a clean install may be the only way to go. In that case, first
backup all your data files, but don't bother with backing up applications
(you'll have to reinstall them from their original media anyhow) or Win2K
itself, of course.

Instructions for the in-place upgrade are here:
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q292175

After either re-installation, of course, you must get your firewall and
antivirus back in place and then visit Windows Update to get the latest
Service Pack and later critical updates.

RC
 
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