Boot / Registry problem

[Stu White]

Hi

I was recently cleaning up my registry and must have done
something a touch dodgy (I was also finding "svchost.exe"
keys, as I had about 4 copies of this running in the task
manager). Now my win2000 pro won't boot at all, just
getting to the windows 2000 boot screen, and then
restarting. It just continually repeats this cycle.
Safe mode and the like make no difference. How can I get
back into Windows so that I can restore a backup registry
that I made before I tinkered with it? (Oh I thought I
was so safe making that backup....)

Thanks

Stu

 

[Jack]

Stu,

if you can't get into windows then you have a real
problem.

I can suggest a few options which may help you.

The first is Safe Mode similar to that seen in Windows
95/98/ME. To get to this press and hold down the F8 key
while booting. This gives you a DOS like screen menu with
various options to control the bootstrap, one of which is
safe mode. This may get the system up and running enough
for you to restore the registry backup.

The second is to boot from the original W2K CD-ROM. If my
memory serves me correctly this gives a number of
additional options when it finds a W2K system already in
place. One is to repair an existing installation and
selecting this might just put the SVCHOST stuff back for
you. Another option concerns the W2K recovery console
which gives you a DOS like command line capability. I am
not particularly experienced with this but you may be able
to use it to restore the registry if you try hard enough.
The recovery console in my experience is a last resort for
desperate people though and needs a fair degree of
technical expertise to get to grips with.

Hope the above helps,

regards,

Jack.

 

[Dave Patrick]

You can replace the hives in;
$windir%\system32\config
with your backups from the recovery console.

To start the Recovery Console, start the computer from the Windows 2000
Setup CD or the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disks. If you do not have Setup
floppy disks and your computer cannot start from the Windows 2000 Setup CD,
use another Windows 2000-based computer to create the Setup floppy disks.
Press ENTER at the "Setup Notification" screen. Press R to repair a Windows
2000 installation, and then press C to use the Recovery Console. The
Recovery Console then prompts you for the administrator password. If you do
not have the correct password, Recovery Console does not allow access to the
computer. If an incorrect password is entered three times, the Recovery
Console quits and restarts the computer. Once the password has been
validated, you have full access to the Recovery Console, but limited access
to the hard disk. You can only access the following folders on your
computer: %systemroot% and %windir%