Damaged Registry

[Guest]

I have had a virus (now removed - I think) which has damaged the registry and stopped the CD drive working. I have tried system restore which has not worked.
1. Will I have to format the hard drive, if so how
2. Any other method of restoring the syste
Thanks

 

[Wesley Vogel]

Have a look here:

How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry That Prevents Windows XP from
Starting
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307545

 

[srd]

Wesley,

As I read the article, it should never be necessary to reformat a hard disk
because of registry errors. Does that mean reformatting isn't required under
_any_ circumstances? I can't think of anything that might necessitate
reformatting besides registry problems, but I am a new user. . .

When my new Dell crashed Windows shortly after booting, the tech first
advised that I run a registry repair utility in DOS. Not involving a boot
problem per se, my circumstances were different from those now discussed,
but the diagnosis was in essence the same , a corrupted registry. When the
repair utility failed, he said there was no alternative to reformatting. Are
there registry problems that necessitate wiping your disk.

srdiamond

 

[Unknown]

If you back up the registry and activate recovery then the only time a
reformat is called for is if the heads on the disk crash or HD goes bad.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for all the advise. I am getting the following message "Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19)" when I attempt to reinstall the cdrom. I have used the system restore feature but this does not work as apparently nothing has changed. I do not know how to reconfigure the cdrom and assumed a reformat was my only option. If I have to reformat how do I go about it

 

[Patti MacLeod]

Hi TWV,

Before reformatting, see if the following helps:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=314060


Regards,

 

[Guest]

Thank you all for your help.
Patti's link worked - thanks Patt
regard

Tim

 

[Patti MacLeod]

You're very welcome, TWV, I'm glad that it worked out for you


Regards,