Piece of advice to everyone: (1) NTFS, and (2) not run as Admin. 😀 Also, do not isntall crap that you don't need (this way less things can go wrong and if, God-forbid, something should go wrong, there is less work to be done in terms of reinstalling).

Snover: the repair disk contains checksums of the files in the various system directories. If the repair finds a difference it will assume that the file in question was corrup (hence the crash, it assumes), and will try to replace it. So it is crucial that the machine providing the repair disk has the same SP + hotfixes as theone you are applying it to. though sometimes one can get really weird errors about files missing during boot (though the file is there, perfectly readable, and identical to its counterpart from any other system). Once again, in these kinds of situations running on NTFS is crucial for data integrity.

V.

It IS an NTFS drive. I don't know what happened. I know I shouldn't run as Administrator, and that it's a Bad Thing(tm), but there are lots of things that I do that need root access, unfortunately. Anyway, I was just running a demo, which makes no sense for it to touch anything, especially since it's on the demoscene 2.0 compilation CD (and it's not something I downloaded separately). Hell, I don't even know if it WAS that that did it.

All I know is that if I hadn't gotten that recovery diskette I would have been screwed, and I wouldn't be able to get my system running again, much less tell anyone about it. 😒

It's all over and done with now, so does anyone have any suggestions on this registry problem?

The other system was installed with the same service pack, and it may have digressed a few hotfixes from my pre-death system. Any comprehensive patches I can install? Q318138 won't install. "The instruction at '0x00979c4f' referenced memory at '0x00210000'. The memory could not be 'written'." Is that because I'm missing some updates now that Windows Update thinks I have (c/o the registry)?

How about my appwiz.cpl problem? That was happening even before this occurred, albeit much less severely (one program could uninstall properly, but after that, errors preventing any others).

What I do is run as non-admin/non-poweruser, and use "Run as..." or log off/log on if I really need to run something as admin (e.g. installation or Windows Update.com). Usually if a software asks me to be admin and I don't think it should need to be admin I just scrap it off my HDD (e.g. Adobe Premiere, which lasted for exactly 2min before being utterly obliterated by a pissed-off me -- once again Adobe proving what a bunch of morons they are with their Mac "assumptions" such as the lack of virtual memory and need for "scratch-disks", and no notion whatsoever of multi-user environments).

What I intend to do is get a second HDD and run VmWare/VirtualPC/Bochs on it for all the non-trustworthy software, or for software that I don't intend to use for long, or just to test (this way I protect my system from junk DLL's, registry entries, etc.).

V.

Hope this helps you:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?sci … ;EN-US;Q307545&

It's an article for Windows XP, but I suppose that Windows 2000 is not much different.

Or maybe here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?sci … ;EN-US;q269075&

Usually it's a good idea to search the Microsoft Knowledge Database. But use google for that! Microsoft search is crap at best.

I always go to "advanced_search" in google, and then restrict the search to results coming from the domain "support.microsoft.com"

I have found incredibly useful answers there, honest.

PS: I think the file "appwiz.cpl" is located in "C:\WINNT\ServicePackFiles\i386", so maybe reinstalling Service Pack 2 can solve your problem.
Or you can wait for Service Pack 3, as they say it will be out this year (at last!)

Best luck,
Regards.

Look in your \winnt\REPAIR directory.

These are your registry files from the first install of your OS. You should always backup your \winnt\system32\config files regularly or just use NTBackup and backup your "system state".

DosFreak & vladr:
Yeah, after yesterday I've scheduled NTUpdate to run every day. Honestly, I didn't know it existed. (Stupidity on my part, and not RTFM. 😁 (I'm sooo hypocritical. But then, I had run five different computers with Windows on them, so...yeah. Excuses, excuses.)) I may try running as a non-Superuser, but I'm not sure how my preferences 'n' stuff will transfer. Plus, I do so much fucking around with my shit that I'd probably end up having most of my programs running with Superuser privilege anyway. (Perhaps I'll stay as Administrator and RunAs an unprivileged user for certain things...but again, this is so strange because, like, it was just a demo, not to mention A) a demo with a review (so it obviously wasn't malicious originally), and B) it was packaged in an ISO file that was packaged in a split RAR archive from scene.org.

Leolo:
I wish I had seen those articles, but then, I couldn't, since my computer wasn't working. 😁 (I would've ignored the fact that they don't render properly in Mozilla.) They look like they would have been useful, but it wasn't my registry that was corrupted (I think, unless that's what \CONFIG\ is). I know I can't wait for SP3, especially since it's becomg modular so I can finally remove IE once-and-for-all! Mwahahahaha! Anyway, thanks for the appwiz.cpl information. I'm gonna look into it.

All:
It looks like the inability to read from the registry has resolved itself. (Go figure.) So, it seems like most things are back to normal.
At some point I'm gonna share with you all this A-MA-ZING demo that was on the demoscene 2.0 cd#1. It wasn't the one that killed my system, but it's so cool and SOOOO detailed! Anyway, yeah. That'll be fun, eh? 😉 Too bad the DemoDVD is nearing completion. I would've pushed it hard. 😜

Three more questions:

1. When I tell it NTBackup to run at system startup, will it run every system startup, or just the next one?
2. Why can't NTBackup use compression?
3. When I said it occurred when I hit the Escape key, did anyone else get the image of Sandra Bullock debugging Wolfenstein 3D in The Net? (*snicker* "This is as bloody as it gets..." [SoF!!])

1. Not Sure
2. It does for Tape but does not for file. 🙁
3. I hated that scene in The Net. 😠

More info from ever-popular James "Kibo" Perry.

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=kibo-230 … 192.168.200.201

Yes, it was the Macintosh version (high-res graphics!) by MacPlay (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=35E2E2A1 … 40logicware.com)

I've even read various reports that it was actually Spear of Destiny and not the original Wolfenstein 3D, but I haven't watched "The Net" since it came out.

Although I did like the supposed software with the "pi" symbols at the bottom of the screen. You click it while holding a couple of keys, you instantly jump to a secured Internet server, and you're even granted access to highly restricted government files, and open a backdoor to the networks of influential companies and organizations. That kind of effect should be easy to do with Flash nowadays. 😀

Tried out the full version of Backup Exec on my home PC (MSBackup is a stripped down Backup Exec) well the full version does Software Compression! YAY! Reduced my backup by around 6GB! 😀

Ooookay...good job of digging up old threads from the dead. This one is staying down permanently. Thread closed.