[dba-Tech] Frozen Registry - redux

Erwin Craps - IT Helps Erwin.Craps at ithelps.be
Sun Jan 18 03:50:04 CST 2004


 Hi Kathryn

Weird stuff over there....

I'm pretty used to this kind of problems but your prob is bigger than
usealy and for me dificult to solve without beeing in front of the
machine.

1) From your webpage I noticed you haven't checked the security rights
on the registry keys.
This you should check for the keys you can not delete (not the kind that
come back).
In W2K you can check the permissions of the registry keys only in
regedt32.exe.

2) What concerns the deleted key, coming back.
I had this once on a server. 
This was due to a registry corruption. The file was not corrupted (so
defrag and chkdsk run fine) but a small part of a registry key was
corrupted.
I had two symptoms for this.
A) I could not delete a key (altough my permissions where fine)
B) I could delete a key, but it came back if I went back and forth
another key.
This was only true for a sub key, not the whole registry ofcourse.

I managed to solved this problem this way.
1) Export the parent key (for example Office10).
2) Delete the whole parent key.
3) At this point you can edit the exported key file, to remove that
ofotoscreens key.
4) Import the key.



There is another important thing that saved my ass once and could very
well work for you.
In Windows XP the regedit (or regedt32) has registry repair
functionality.
The problem is getting you registry file on a XP computer.
This you can do this way.
1) You need a second install of W2000 on your computer (it is best you
do this on another partition).
You can also put your hd temporary in another W2K computer. I'm not sure
if you may put it in a XP computer directly because there are some
issues with NT4 disk in a W2K pc also. Afterwards you can no longer do a
chkdsk in case of NT4/W2K. So if anyone can confirm that putting a W2K
disk in a XP machine causes no problems, you could go for it.


Get the software registry file from winnt\system32\config from your
faulty windows to the pc with XP via a network connection or memory
stick or something.
Do the same thing for the user.dat file from the user profile that cause
the problem "documents and settings\administrator\user.dat"
On the windows XP computer open regedit 
Go on the HKEY_USERS
Click file > load component (translated from dutch)
Find the USER.DAT file you copied.
Load it.
Name it "TEMPORARY" or something you clearly recognise.
If corruptions it will repair it now and give you a warning.
Stay on this key.
Click on file
Remove component (will unload from your xp registry and will have
repaired the file on disk).

Do the same for the software file. But change to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
before loading the software file.

If regedit reported errors on 1 or both files you need to copy them back
on your faulty machine overwriting the existing one.
PLEASE MAKE A COPY OF THOSE FILES BEFORE OVERWRITING.
BEST THAT YOU MAKE A COPY OF THE WHOLE CONFIG FOLDER.


If you are not confortable with this procedure, DON'T DO IT.
But I done it once or twice for corrupted NT4 and W2K registries and it
solved the problem for both.

Please note that there is a backup system for these files (the previous
profile thing while you boot) but this is of no use because it is a
corruption INSIDE the registry these backup files carry usealy also the
corrupted keys.

Please note that if the XP regedit does not report any corruptions
inside the registry file it has no point of copying them back to your
faulty computer.

Erwin

















-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Kathryn
Bassett
Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2004 1:03 AM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: [dba-Tech] Frozen Registry - redux

Still can't edit the registry. I've made a web page with information:
http://www.ourmailinglist.org/frozenreg/troubleshooting.htm

Please peruse to the end and see if you have anymore suggestions on how
I can unfreeze my registry.

Thanks,

--
Kathryn Rhinehart Bassett (Pasadena CA)
"Genealogy is my bag" "GH is my soap"
kathryn at bassett.net
http://bassett.net  

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