Messed up registry trying to stop cursor from blinking

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fo Pa
  • Start date Start date
F

Fo Pa

I am using Win2K, SP4. I wanted to stop the cursor in my dos
window from blinking. At:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/registry_tips.htm#no_blinking_cursor
I found the following registry file

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"CursorBlinkRate"="-1"

It looked harmless enough, so I doubleclicked it
after saving it. It made my the cursor in the dos
window blink very fast. To remove that registry
entry, I tried the following trick, which I picked
up on the street:

REGEDIT4

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]

This made the cusor blink as normal, but it messed up a number of other
settings. None of the ways of getting my normal setting back seem to work.
For example, I don't like the menu fading, so I disabled it in the Display
Properties, and again Dwell as using Tweak UI. After the above registry
removal, the fade was back, and no amount of disabling it seemed to make it
stick. Every time I re-open tweakUI or Display Properties, the fade is
shown as selected. Same with rebooting.

A tweakUI feature that was disabled after the above registry removal is
window focus following the mouse pointer. No amount of enabling it and
rebooting seems to make the enabling stick.

Finally, I can't pull up a menu by right-clicking on the desktop. I can
right click on many places to get a context menu, but not on the desktop.

Have I permanently messed up my registry? Is there a way to get it back?
I didn't save my registry because I always found it confusing, and the
registry changed looked fairly harmless. My mistake. Any suggestions
for getting my normal settings back would be very greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Fo Pa
 
I think I found part of the problem behind my inability to change
certain features settings e.g. missing context menu from the desktop,
focus doesn't follow pointer, menu fade effects. The problem seems to
be that the nonadministrator account no longer has rights to change
its own keys. I found out by undoing a register change for hiding
desktop icons. Here is the excerpt:

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article05-012
-------------------------------------------------
* Win 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP
* Run the Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE).
* Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\
CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer.
* Double-click the NoDesktop value (if its not there, select Edit ->
New -> DWORD Value, and type "NoDesktop" for its name).
* Enter 1 for the value, and click Ok. (Just delete the value
entirely to undo this.)
* Click on the desktop, and press F5 to refresh the desktop so that
this change will take effect. (More information.)

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win98/t1002291091
------------------------------------------------------
To reverse the procedure you would change the value 1 you entered to 0
(zero).

I couldn't perform the above undo in the nonadministrator account; I
get the message "Cannot edit NoDesktop: Error writing the value's new
contents". But I could do so in the administrator account. I could
also perform the undo for the nonadministrator, so long as regedit is
run as administrator. This change on both accounts restored the
context menu from right-clicking on the desktop, in addition to
restoring the desktop icons (not something I really wanted). I didn't
go hunt down the nonadmin registry keys to get rid of menu fading and
have window focus follow the mouse pointer. The fact that I have to
be admin to change these settings for the nonamin account is highly
abnormal, since this was never the case before. I just fire up tweakUI
or Display Properties as nonadmin.

Somehow, doing:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"CursorBlinkRate"="-1"

followed by

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]

(as nonadmin, as described in the original post below) has changed the
permissions of an entire section of the nonadmin registry. Is there a
safe way of restoring them to what they should be? I suspect that the
security settings are different depending on which part of the nonadmin
registry one is referring to, so I'm not sure if it can be restored in
one swoop. I'm puzzled by how the above key changes could have done
this -- not only did it change the effects for the nonadmin account, it
also changed it for the admin account. Fortunately, the admin account
has no problems recustomizing the settings again.

Thanks for any suggestions on restoring permissions for the nonadmin
registry

Fo Pa

P.S. I just looked at "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop" for
the nonadmin account, and it doesn't exist. When I run regedit as
admin, it does exist. Maybe I can just copy it somehow? I don't
want to mess up my system further.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Original Post
-------------
I am using Win2K, SP4. I wanted to stop the cursor in my dos window
from blinking. At:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/registry_tips.htm#no_blinking_cursor I
found the following registry file

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"CursorBlinkRate"="-1"

It looked harmless enough, so I doubleclicked it after saving it. It
made my the cursor in the DOS window blink very fast. To remove
that registry entry, I tried the following trick, which I picked up
"on the streets":

REGEDIT4

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]

This made the cusor blink as normal, but it messed up a number of
other settings. None of the ways of getting my normal setting back
seem to work. For example, I don't like "menu fading", so I
disabled it in the Display Properties, and again using Tweak UI.
After the above registry removal, the fade was back, and no amount of
disabling it seemed to make it stick. Every time I re-open tweakUI or
Display Properties, the fade is shown as selected. Same with
rebooting.

Another tweakUI feature that was disabled after the above registry
removal is window focus following the mouse pointer. No amount of
enabling it and rebooting seems to make the enabling stick.

Finally, I can't pull up a menu by right-clicking on the desktop. I
can right click on many places to get a context menu, but not on the
desktop. This is a general Win2K behaviour that got nixed, not a
tweakUI feature.

Have I permanently messed up my registry? Is there a simple way to
get it back (I know I can always reinstall windows :P )? I didn't
save my registry because I always found it confusing, and the registry
changed looked fairly harmless. My mistake.

Fo Pa
 
Fo said:
Somehow, doing:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"CursorBlinkRate"="-1"

followed by

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]

(as nonadmin, as described in the original post below) has changed the
permissions of an entire section of the nonadmin registry. Is there a
safe way of restoring them to what they should be?
Click to expand...

P.S. I just looked at "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop" for
the nonadmin account, and it doesn't exist. When I run regedit as
admin, it does exist. Maybe I can just copy it somehow?
Click to expand...

Well, exporting the registry folder from another user account and importing it
into the one where it was clobbered seemed to work. Hope this helps another
registry-nonsavvy person.

Fo Pa
 
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