Subj : Stupid question number 7 To : Bennie Hutto From : Charles Scaglione Date : Thu Jun 08 2000 08:16 am Bennie Hutto wrote to Charles Scaglione BH> I'd been trying to figure out this problem for several days, but BH> using your advice and restarting in a DOS mode, the scanreg prog BH> (restoring the oldest copy of the registry) was given the message BH> "System file restore failed". I was frustrated and restarted in a BH> "safe mode command prompt only" mode, I was allowed to restore the BH> registry in this way, but to no avail. The scanreg prog showed me BH> that the previously restored .cab file was 'not started', I repeated BH> this procedure 3 times, each time scanreg tells me the files were BH> successfully restored but not started and when my affected programs BH> start I still get the error. How can I track down which area of the BH> registry was affected? The registry file is pretty extensive, how BH> will I know if I'm editing the right key? I'll do a backup and try BH> and hunt them down. BH> Thanks for the reply, cross your fingers. :) If the scanreg /restore utility didn't work properly or couldn't because of Registry errors, then you almost have no other choice but to "kill" the damaged Registry and start over. That's a most painful way to have to reinstall Win98 since it'll require reinstalling all Win32 apps again. However, you may be "battling a windmill" by trying to track down the damaged part of the Registry. I seem to remember a better way... let me access my data base of problems and see what I can come up with. Stand by.... OK. Here's something I found which may work for you: ****************************************************** Windows-only Clean Install In some cases it is desirable to perform a 'clean' install of Windows on a freshly formatted HDD. Unfortunately, that will also require re- installation of all products on the system, when all that was needed was a refresh of Windows to resolve driver conflicts, configuration errors, or corrupted Windows files. As an alternative, the following is a procedure to do a Windows-only 'clean' install, which will result in a complete redetection of system hardware and reinstallation of drivers, yet which will retain the Registry contents for System and Application settings. Note that unlike a full 'clean' install, this procedure will not dispose of orphaned files in \Windows and \Windows\System. Should this procedure fail, the recovery steps provided here may not succeed, so this procedure should not be undertaken except as a way to potentially avoid a full format/reinstall, and one should be fully prepared to do that format/reinstall if necessary. 1) Backup the current Registry (scanreg /backup works well for Win98), and insure the Startup Diskette can access the CDROM. 2) Rename \Windows\Inf to \InfOld to insure that \Windows\Inf will be refreshed, and that no 'legacy' or updated .inf files will be retained. Create a new \Windows\Inf\Other folder and copy the .infs for any relavent installed hardware from \Windows InfOld\Other back to it. Ignore out-of-date infs or infs for any hardware that is no longer installed. 3) Insure that no legacy virtual drivers will be called or loaded at boot. Delete the following Registry key: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD 4)Then rename \Windows\System\VMM32 to \VMMOld, and rename \Windows\System\IOSubSys to \IOSubOld. 5) Remove only the current System Configuration from the Registry by deleting the following two keys: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class HKLM\Enum Be advised - your system may freeze when HKLM\Enum is deleted, so delete it last. Boot the Startup Diskette and reinstall Windows, keeping newer files. Reinstall devices not recognized and/or set up by Windows, and visit the Win98 Update site to insure your updates are current. If you are using this tip for Win95 SR1 or SR2, reinstall applicable fixes and DUN if necessary. Should recovery be required, boot to DOS and use 'move' to restore the original names of the renamed Folders, and restore the backed-up Registry (scanreg /restore works nicely for Win98). ****************************************************** The above was copied from the MS Newsgroup - Win98 General. Good luck. cscag@flash.net CMPQwk 1.42 1262 --- Maximus/2 3.01 * Origin: COMM Port OS/2 juge.com 204.89.247.1 (281) 980-9671 (1:106/2000) .