Edit SYSTEM file offline?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul
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Paul

I have just installed ws2003 on my win2k machine, and now its a dual
boot system. However the win2k os will no longer boot, I think the
additional overhead of the boot software and the large size of the old
registry are over the boot memory limits. This is the theory I am
working on. I get the error message about missing or corrupt registry
file, and I don't think its corrupt, just too big.

If I boot into ws2003 and copy an older version of system into the
win2k's system32/config I can boot win2k ok. But I lose about 2 years of
software setups, since the system file is way out of date.

Is there any way to edit a system file offline? I think if I could get
in there and clean it up I could boot it again. As far as I know, all
the registry editors are designed to edit an active registry.
 
Paul said:
I have just installed ws2003 on my win2k machine, and now its a dual
boot system. However the win2k os will no longer boot, I think the
additional overhead of the boot software and the large size of the old
registry are over the boot memory limits. This is the theory I am
working on. I get the error message about missing or corrupt registry
file, and I don't think its corrupt, just too big.

If I boot into ws2003 and copy an older version of system into the
win2k's system32/config I can boot win2k ok. But I lose about 2 years of
software setups, since the system file is way out of date.

Is there any way to edit a system file offline? I think if I could get
in there and clean it up I could boot it again. As far as I know, all
the registry editors are designed to edit an active registry.
Click to expand...
Nevermind. I was right about the memory problem. For reference it was
fixed this way:
1. backup boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com ws2003 versions.
2. restore previously saved boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com from win2k.
3. boot win2k normally just like ws2003 was never installed.
4. clean and defragment the 6MB win2k system registry down to 4MB.
5. restore the ws2003 boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com
6. reboot, can now boot to either os.
 
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