A Log of A User's Ultimate Nightmare

[Dick]

Try this from Fred Langa: Non destructive XP rebuild instructions.

http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-06-19.htm

 

[q_q_anonymous]

Try this from Fred Langa: Non destructive XP rebuild instructions.

http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-06-19.htm

It's called a win xp repair. It's not a new discovery.

google windows xp reinstall , and the first link that comes up, isn't
a win xp reinstall, it's a win xp repair.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
It is on the win xp setup boot CD. Most techies would've tried it out
and so learnt about it within a month of first using win xp.


the OP should've done a repair or if that doesn't work, a reinstall,
long ago.

back up data first. (though a repair shouldn't lose any data),

I think any data outside of \windows and \documents and settings,
should be safe. i.e. data in a directory not created by or related to
windows. I might not bother backing that up if it was my computer.

The OP was right to post such a long explanation.
MVPs like to think they are donating their time to personally helping
the original poster. The reality is that many posters such as the one
that started this thread, are documenting problems, whose solutions may
help many people.
People posting replies are contributing to that effort,of helping many
people, including themselves. Adding to the archive of stored
solutions.

If a reinstall were to fail(during or straight after), then it could be
a HW problem.Diagnose/troubleshoot that.

 

[Guest]

--
PeggySue

My usual writing style is to pose the question, and then SOMETIMES---as in
this case----follow with a background that is more often than not HUGELY
DETAILED.

This heads off follow-up questions from those interested in the problem,
and who often ask questions regarding a detail missing in the shortest of
posts. Most of them time, the responder asks a question about a missing
detail, then runs off and doesn't bother to read the answer.

I'll be more careful to section off a long post to include seemingly less
important details at the bottom of the post. This post was just not one of
those.

I also answer posts to questions in other newsgroups.

There are readers/posters in many newsgroups who object to a post being
more than 2 lines or 30 words long. I pretty much ignore their objections
because they ultimately confess that they have an attention span shorter
than a Pentium processor clock cycle. I am not saying that you are or are
not that type of person. I just mention it in passing.

 

[Guest]

PARDON ME I'M JUST BEING A BIT SARCASTIC WHEN I SAY THE ONLY WAY TO FIX YOUR
PROBLEM WOULD BE TO SCRAP YOUR COMPUTERS AND START OVER WITH A NON-WINDOW
BASED OS! I HAVE HAD THE SAME PROBLEMS SINCE I BOUGHT THIS PRESENT
SYSTEM,WINDOWS XP,AND HAVE HAD OTHERS MORE TECH SAVY THAN ME GET IT BACK TO
NEAR NORMAL,NOTICE I SAID NEAR NORMAL, WHERE I CAN USE IT. IT SEEMS WINDOWS
HAS TAKEN A NOSE DIVE SINCE WINDOWS 98! THE ONLY OS I NEVER HAD A LICK OF
TROUBLE FROM! I'M LUCKY I CAN BOOT UP IN THE MORNINGS! IN A
WORD...............WINDOWS 2000 SUCK,XP IS WORSE AND MILLINIUM...........WELL
WE WONT GO THERE! SERIOUSLY, DUMB WINDOWS AS AN OS IF YOU WANNA GET BACK TO
WORK!

 

[---Fitz---]

My question is: I have a really damaged system, and where do I go from
Actually I think your best solution is to back up important files/data,
format and reinstall. I realize this is not your first choice but it sounds
like your computer is pretty screwed up.

The only way to be almost 100% sure any virus is gone is reformatting.

Recommendations for the future: Back up data daily to a remote disk drive
(I use a Maxtor 250 gig external USB disk) using a free backup program such
as Cobian Backup or create a Disk Image. Remote drives are pretty cheap now
and can easily hold 14 CDs worth of data. Scrap Norton products (except
Ghost) because they use far too many resources and really hatchet the
registry.

As far as your statement:

I can assure you there will be more than 5 or 6 registry problems and still
no guarantee the bizarre behavior will go away. You probably have corrupted
files and programs that fixing the registry won't solve.

You can take an hour or two to burn your CDs or weeks trying to figure out
what's wrong with your PC.

Sorry I can't deliver better news.