Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)
I have a scenario described here many times. System looked fine
yesterday, no problems at all, running NAV and SP2 with firewall up,
shutdown for the night, today I can't boot. The registry has been
corrupted and I need to get back in via Safe Boot or System Recovery
to fix it. The problem is that with this corruption the Login/Logon
process doesn't validate passwords for Administrator or my user
accounts. All of the docs that talk about fixing the registry from SR
assume that you can get past the prompt for Administrator password
after you specify the C:\Windows location. Catch 22 there.
I tried going back to Last Known Good setting - when booting before it
would at least ask for a password and now it doesn't. I think someone
said here recently that the accounts profile data isn't backedup in
the registry like this, so I didn't expect success here.
(Microsoft, please learn from these reports and fix them for
Longhorn/Vista.)
I export the registry to a backup folder once per week as files
HCC.reg, HCR.reg, HCU.reg, HLM.reg, and HU.reg. I know this isn't the
most effective way of fixing things, but to get back to a runnable
state I'd have no problem importing the files to the registry - if
only I can get to a command prompt to do it. Again, any attempt I
make to Safe Boot or otherwise get to cmd fails because I'm prompted
for a password.
I have other systems and would gladly hook up the hard drive with the
bad registry, import the reg files, then reload the drive back to the
right system, but how can I import to a hive other than the current
system hive? I don't want to put the drive on a good system and
import all the keys into that new system, I want to update the
inactive hive.
I do not have a Automatic System Recovery disk because I've read too
many times in the past that there is a good chance that it will fail
or make things worse, so I've tried to create homegrown backup
policies - but I didn't consider this scenario.
My plan so far is to ensure I have a complete data backup (should be
good as of yesterday) and maybe try using the the Bootdisk utility
from Petter Nordahl-Hagen to patch the registry or zap the password
but without knowing what kind of damage is there I don't have a lot of
faith that this will solve the problem.
Any other suggestions or am I looking at a full install? And how do
I/we prevent this from happening in the future?!?!
Thanks!
Tony
I have a scenario described here many times. System looked fine
yesterday, no problems at all, running NAV and SP2 with firewall up,
shutdown for the night, today I can't boot. The registry has been
corrupted and I need to get back in via Safe Boot or System Recovery
to fix it. The problem is that with this corruption the Login/Logon
process doesn't validate passwords for Administrator or my user
accounts. All of the docs that talk about fixing the registry from SR
assume that you can get past the prompt for Administrator password
after you specify the C:\Windows location. Catch 22 there.
I tried going back to Last Known Good setting - when booting before it
would at least ask for a password and now it doesn't. I think someone
said here recently that the accounts profile data isn't backedup in
the registry like this, so I didn't expect success here.
(Microsoft, please learn from these reports and fix them for
Longhorn/Vista.)
I export the registry to a backup folder once per week as files
HCC.reg, HCR.reg, HCU.reg, HLM.reg, and HU.reg. I know this isn't the
most effective way of fixing things, but to get back to a runnable
state I'd have no problem importing the files to the registry - if
only I can get to a command prompt to do it. Again, any attempt I
make to Safe Boot or otherwise get to cmd fails because I'm prompted
for a password.
I have other systems and would gladly hook up the hard drive with the
bad registry, import the reg files, then reload the drive back to the
right system, but how can I import to a hive other than the current
system hive? I don't want to put the drive on a good system and
import all the keys into that new system, I want to update the
inactive hive.
I do not have a Automatic System Recovery disk because I've read too
many times in the past that there is a good chance that it will fail
or make things worse, so I've tried to create homegrown backup
policies - but I didn't consider this scenario.
My plan so far is to ensure I have a complete data backup (should be
good as of yesterday) and maybe try using the the Bootdisk utility
from Petter Nordahl-Hagen to patch the registry or zap the password
but without knowing what kind of damage is there I don't have a lot of
faith that this will solve the problem.
Any other suggestions or am I looking at a full install? And how do
I/we prevent this from happening in the future?!?!
Thanks!
Tony
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