Question about fixing corrupted registry in WinXP

My wife is currently in New York doing research. She just called and told me that Windows won’t start on her laptop, and she gets the following error message:

It tells her that she may be able to fix the problem using a recovery disc.

I did some searching and found this Microsoft article, which details how to fix this problem. The only thing is, my wife’s somputer is a Toshiba with an OEM version of Windows installed, and the MS article specifically states:

So, i was wondering if anyone has any advice about this probblem that might be relevant to our situation, with an OEM version of Windows.

I have the Toshiba recovery disc for her computer here with me, and i’m going to take it with me when i go up to meet her in New York on Tuesday. If anyone can tell me what my first course of action should be, i’d be most grateful. Is it likely that the Toshiba recovery disc will have a utility that will fix the problem? Or will it be more complicated than that?

Just wanted to ask on additional question:

If we can’t fix the corrupt registry, and need to reinstall Windows from scratch, would it be possible before doing this to connect the laptop’s hard drive to another computer to recover some data?

Just before my wife left for New York, we backed up all of her files, so even if we can’t fix the problem and have to do a fresh install, she won’t lose all that work.

But she has been in New York for almost two weeks, and has been doing work on the laptop every day. If we do have to reinstall, she will lose the work she has done on this trip, which would be a real pain in the ass.

I’ll give this a bump in case there are people who haven’t seen it yet.

Hail, hapless yeoman!

So yeah, that’s exactly the article from MSFT I might have pointed you too, but it’s certainly a high- risk proposition, so you need to take appropriate precautions. Absolutely the right place to start, unless you can sneak in via safe mode and happen to keep System Restore backups and a few days back-rev fixes it.

Otherwise: follow the instructions on that page, but when it has you fussing around in the system32\config directory, make damned sure to keep a backup of all five hives before you start mucking around and renaming files. Looks like they do ask you to back the stuff up: don’t take any short cuts in there ;).

Sometime It will be screwed up in such a way that you can’t login to the recovery console because the admin password section of the hives has gotten hosed. The are ways around that on the internets if necessary, though. (Also a slightly harrowing security hole which it is best not to think too hard about…)

So if it turns out after pulling up the backup system hive (if you feel lucky, you could first try just replacing the system hive itself rather than the whole batch as advised in the article: worst case scenario you try again) that it’s killed all your old accounts and gone back to OEMlandia, you should still be able to recover your old user data by digging into the c:\Documents and settings\ directory structure- so even if you have to create your accounts from scratch, all the real data is still there, and you just face configuration delights.

If none of this works, you can get all the data off the drive either by

  1. copying it to external media from the recovery console (which would suck and probablu require you to do some research on how to properly mount a device from that context,)

  2. buy an empty drive enclosure, pull out your hard drive and mount it as an external usb/1394 device on another system to harvest the data,

  3. find yourself a knoppix/other boot cd that can boot up the machine and mount up the drive as well as peripheral storage device you haul your data onto. Basically whatever boot cd most easily mounts your devices, be it the windows cd, a knoppix/linux cd, or winpe etc.

Good luck!

Thanks very much for the advice. I’ll give it a go.

(crosses fingers)

I was in your exact same situation three months ago when my wife’s Toshiba laptop showed me the same error message :eek:

I tried several things; I called tech support who calmly walked me through the re-image procedure (without saying so). At the very last step, before hitting the ENTER key, I asked the guy if we were blowing away the hard drive and he said “well, yes.”

I asked them where we get a WinXP installation disk and he said we don’t get one.

I then started mucking with another WinXP installation disk I have from my other system and it did exactly what your MS article said would happen :frowning:
My solution: I popped in a Knoppix CD and used Knoppix to allow me to copy “My Documents” and a few other things onto a thumb drive (as noted by jormundgondir). Knoppix saved my bacon without me having to mess around with hardware.

Tech support people who do that really piss me off. Luckily, i know enough about computers to know what it means when they suggest that sort of thing, but i’ve heard plenty of stories of people who didn’t know, and who ended up losing all their data because they weren’t warned about the consequences of a reinstallation.

Thanks for the advice.

Question: i’ve never used something like this. I assume i can create one off the internet somewhere? And how difficult is it to use?

Any advice about this procedure would be most welcome.

Go here: Knoppix

It has been awhile since I downloaded it, but I think you get an ISO image that you can use your favorite burning tool to burn.

You will need to configure the Toshiba’s BIOS to boot from CD – this is disabled by default (on my wife’s machine it was).
Plug in a thumb drive (or flash card or whatever) before booting.
Pop in the Knoppix CD and power it up.
You will get a “Boot:” prompt. There will be a short message telling you to hit a couple of hotkeys for help. Do so. You will be presented with a list of command-line switches.

I normally only use the ones to set the keyboard and the resolution.

For the Windows user, Knoppix is a completely different animal; it comes preconfigured with a slick user interface and lots of useful apps preinstalled, so it is fairly easy to get going.

Your hard drives are visible on the desktop, and accessible in read-only mode.
The only trick I remember having a problem with was that the thumb drive needs to be remounted in read-write mode. Try right-clicking on it and messing with its properties.

Good luck!

Many thanks for the advice.

I’ve downloaded the Knoppix disc image, and now i’m downloading Nero Burning ROM so i can burn the image correctly to disc. My current CCD burning software doesn’t have an option to burn an image.

I’m going to New York tomorrow, and when i get there i’ll try to fix my wife’s computer, or at least get her files downloaded to a memory key. I’ll let you know how it all goes.

You can also try to make a Pre-boot-environment cd such as BartPE. Do a google search on that.

I’m on a computer in the New York Public Lbrary, and my session only has three minutes left, so this will be short.

I managed to use the Knoppix CD to retreve all my wife’s important work from this trip and move it onto a USB key, along with her email archive. Many thanks!!!

I coldn’t fix te problem, and when i gave up and decided to just wipe the hard drive and start oer using the recovery CD, it wouldn’t let me do that either. The oshiba people were no help, opining that my CD must be scratched!

Anyway, thanks for the help. Now i just need to see if ican get into theDOS prompt from Knoppix