I was having an odd problem. I had a memory leak and it kept grabbing memory until my page file and physical memory couldn’t handle it, and then gave me an error about how there wasn’t enough virtual memory.
I figure ‘ok, memory leak, big deal, reboot’, so I do.
Upon booting, I get a blue screen that says something about the user/software part of the registry being corrupt, unreadable, or something similar.
In any case, I remember from a class a while ago that windows 98 would save copies of the registry each time you boot, up to 5, and then keep the 5 most recent ones. And you could restore them with a regfix command or something similar, I forget exactly what.
Is there anything like that in win2k? Does it store old registries? Is there any way I can switch to an old registry at boot?
Try holding down F8 when you reboot (well, after it cycles through the BIOS). One of the choices you will get should be Last Known Good Configuration. This will fix registry errors, but not driver issues. Good luck.
Sounds like it’s too late now, but you can repair the registry with an Emergency Restore Disk. You have to manually create one (before any problems start) through Windows 2000 Backup. Type ntbackup at the command line, select Emergency Repair Disk, and check the box for Also back up the registry to the repair directory. When you need to restore, boot from the Win2K CD and select Repair an existing Windows 2000 installation. It will ask for the ERD.
I’m pretty sure VIA only recommends the 4-in-1 driver for Win9x, not 2000.