big registry problem

[bbcct]

Hello,

I have a problem with my Win95 registry and I need some help.

I am constantly (about every two minutes or so) getting the following message boxes, and I quote;

"Windows encountered an error accessing the system registry. You should restore the registry now and restart your computer. If you ignore the message and shut down your system, you may lose data. Restoring the registry will replace the faulty registry with a known good backup
copy. However, this backup copy may not contain all of the information recently added to your system." - [at the bottom of this message there is a button that says;] - "Restore from backup and restart"

[At this point I click on the 'Restore from backup and restart' button and then I get the following message box;]

"Windows could not restore your registry. Either a disk error occurred, or no valid copy of the registry exists. Use a utility such as Scan Disk to check your hard disk for errors, and then reinstall Windows. If you continue without installing, you may lose data." - [at the bottom of
this message there is a button that says;] - "Shutdown windows now"

[At this point I click on the 'Shutdown windows now' button and then I get the following message box;]

"To finish restoring your registry you must restart your computer." - [at the bottom of this message there is a button that says;] - "Do you want to restart your computer now?"

[At this point I click on the 'Do you want to restart your computer now?' and restart my computer.]

The first few times I followed this process my registry was not fixed or restored, so, I ran Scan Disk and Norton Disk Doctor and Norton Win Doctor and Norton System Check and then I reinstalled Windows and I am still having the same problem.

Any ideas? I would greatly appreciate any help.

Thanks,

Steve P.

[jstolz]

Wow, this sounds terrible. I'd suggest the following:

-Boot to the Windows95 startup screen and select the Boot to DOS option. This means Windows95 will not be loaded.
-You want to restore the last registry copy (which is *hopefully* not corrupted--but probably is based on the messages you're getting). This comprises two files; user.da0 (that's a d-a-zero) and system.da0. Type the following commands at the DOS prompt:
attrib -r -s -h c:\windows\system.da?
attrib -r -s -h c:\windows\user.da?
copy c:\windows\system.da0 c:\windows\system.dat
copy c:\windows\user.da0 c:\windows\user.dat
attrib +r +s +h c:\windows\system.da?
attrib +r +s +h c:\windows\user.da?
-Reboot. In an ideal world, you problems will be solved.

If the above doesn't work, try going to this url:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q131/4/31.asp?LNG=ENG&SA=MSDN

This is a knowledgebase response that specifically addresses the "Windows encountered an error accessing the system registry" error message.

Best of luck to you.

Regards...

[Nick]

I notice on the last line you state that:-
'and then I reinstalled Windows and I am still having the same problem.'

Did you just do a re-install over the existing Windows?. If so, you will need to splat the disk and start afresh. If this is the case you will need to fdisk and reformat to get a 'clean' disc to do a clean install.

Nick

[jstolz]

Nick, I noticed that too and was wondering if an fdisk wasn't the solution. However, I've always been fuzzy on how you do an fdisk and then reinstall the OS... doesn't fdisk wipe your hd clean so that you MUST boot off a floppy? And, if that's the case, what do you need to have on the floppy to effect a new, fresh installation on your HD?

Regards...

[bbcct]

Thanks for your help. I did as you suggested, but it did not fix the problem. I will now try the web sight you suggested.

I was wondering - would installing Win98 over Win95 fix the problem?

Also, I don't know enough about computers to try what Nick suggested.

Thanks,

Steve

[bbcct]

Nick, thanks for your help. I did just do a reinstall over the existing windows. I don't know enough about computers to do the other kind of install you suggest.

I did what "jstolz" suggested, but that did not fix the problem either. Would installing Win98 over Win95 fix the problem?

Thanks for your help

Steve

[Nick]

OK, what is happening is that the 're-install' of windows checks what files etc. exist... it doesn't care if they are corrupt, or even the right ones, as long as the file name(s) match what it is looking for... therefore a re-install over an existing set-up never works, or if it does, the install is less than healthy. In my early days I had much the same problem as you, although mind was caused by a dodgy hard drive and bad sectors... I spent at least 6 hrs one night trying to recover Windows and the registry...and it got worse and worse as it went on. The lesson I learnt is this:-
Make back-ups of your important data...if possible put in a slave Hard Drive (I have 5 HD on 2 machines) to use for this purpose, and keep the operating System on the Master (boot) drive.
Now, when (if) this sort of thing happens, I might spend 30 mins or so analysing what is the problem... if it couldn't be resolved in this time I would wipe the Master drive and do a fresh install of windows... with my data safe on other drives.

To use fdisk etc. is easy to do, but you need to get it right, else **NO HARD DRIVE LEFT** = no computer.
E-Mail me and I will happily talk you through it.

nw@nonags.com

Nick

[Nick]

Fdisk does wipe the HD... it even splats the FAT (and the boot sector, I believe). You need a bootable floppy to do it... I will not explain here, because every machine/harddrive/OS is different and that would be bad advice for me to give, and I don't think this forum is the place for this sort of information - I did hestitate about mentioning fdisk, but through my experience this case seems ideal for this solution as Steve doesn't seem to be worried about losing data... he just wants Windoze up and running again.. I will be happy to explain fdisk/formatting to you via E-mail if you wish?

Nick

[cyh]

If one chose "Restore from backup and restart" and successfully restarted to Windows, the previous .dat files would have already been replaced by .da0 (if any, not in Steve's case.) So if he still got the same registry corruption error message, that means the .da0 files could not help.

Just a reminder.

[cyh]

Delete C:\Windows (Windows folder) is enough for a fresh Windows. If want all previously installed software to be reinstalled freshly, delete 'C:\Program Files' and other folders that belong to them. Fdisk+format would be no different if it is not a harddrive problem.
For harddrive checking, a thorough scan with dos version of scandisk is enough.

I never format/fdisk my partitions (each with own OS) for my 3 harddrives for the reason of reinstalling a fresh Windows OS.

Registry corruption error is common if one installs and uninstalls many software and/or hardware. Many rubbish registry settings that were left behind after uninstalling software/hardware would cause Windows to be not able to find those uninstalled components and hence it's killed by its own registry. There are few ways of restoring registry such as restoring from backup version of registry files (as suggested by Jstolz) or reinstall Windows over existing one (as suggested in your previous message), but if the orphan registry settings resist and are effective, the error can't be resolved without a fresh Windows.

You can try my method next time if you want to install a fresh Windows. Hope it saves you lot of time or if you have some files that you don't want to be erased in the partition :)

Later.

[salcorn]

I have had what sounds to be exactly the same problem you describe, and I followed the same path(s) that have been suggested to you.

My problem began to occur about a month after I had made my last change to my computer. I had added another stick of memory.

When I removed the memory, all worked fine. I replaced that stick with another I had laying around and have run trouble free (at least in that area) for over a year now.