Restore Registry

sloojoe

sloojoe

New Member
I was helping my friend fix his computer. We made a backup of the registry before playing around on it. We installed Norton AV and then it said to change file permissions to install. We gave the current user write/copy/full permission. After we pressed Apply the computer went crazy and rebooted. Now Windows XP home freezes right before the usernames appear and we need help. We put his HD into an external usb case and want to restore the registry. Any solutions?
 
The first thing "to have done" there would have been trying to either get to the desktop in safe mode due to the bad install there or trying a manual startup of the system restore process. But that requires the drive be in the case and not in an external adapter. Even to perform a repair install of Windows if needed you have to have the drive in the case where it was.

These two links are life savers at times when you have a bad day. Manually overwritting the corrupted registry may or may not see the best results while in the adapter or slaved in another case. With the drive back in the case the first link explains how to start the system restore process from the safe mode/command prompt only option seen in the Windows F8 boot menu. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;304449

If there is a good recovery disk onhand that came with the HP and you are unable for some reason to get the restore process running the repair install method outlined in the article seen at the second link here explains how to repair Windows without touching any programs, files, or folders on the drive. What this does is repair the essentials in Windows that it will run. Next time go with AVG, Avast, AntiVir, Kaspersky but not Norton! http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
 
Restore

I agree, no more norton. I forgot to mention that we tried to boot into safe mode and it freezes in the same place (When the welcome screen appears, but no usernames). I did some searching online (query is: win xp freezes at welcome screen) and numerou people have experienced this problem, but no one has posted any good solutions besides, using the recovery disk. Thank for your help.
 
If you have anything to save off of the primary partitiion you will want to back that up before attempting the last thought of cleaning the drive by deletion of the current partitions. Since you could start with the safe mode to a certain point you can also use the safe mode/command prompt only option to try the manual method of using the system restore process detailed at the MS page there.

If that finally sees the desktop load, avoiding a wipe there, you could use the system file checker at the command console or usually Run prompt for that repair tool to repair and replace the one or more files you seem to be missing there. A good site that explains the optional switches as well as the "sfc /scannow" option is seen at http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/howto-24.html

The system restore process would be the first thing to attempt there before abandoning the ship so to speak. Since you have a recovery not full install disk there here's where Leo can help explain a few more things. http://ask-leo.com/i_have_no_cd_how_do_i_get_at_windows_xp_setup.html
 
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