sixpack said:
I never mess with the REGEDIT stuff, I was told never to get into it unless
you know what your doing, which I do not ! When I was doing all the trouble
shooting the Restore would not work, i just checked it and it says the drive
G- I think that restore uses is turned off ? Now I have no idea and can not
find how to turn it back on, it dont show up in disk clean or my computer or
anywhere ! Would it fix things if I did a complete system refresh, clean
install and start from new ?
Start:Settings:Control Panel and run "System".
"System Restore" is a tab in that panel. There is a tick box
"Turn off System Restore on all drives", as well as individual settings
for each partition. The stuff that matters to me, is all stored on C:.
so I only have "monitoring" enabled on C:. Monitoring on the other
partitions is turned off. The tick box near the top is unticked, as
I want System Restore to be running.
If you turn off System Restore using that tick box, it flushes the
folder containing the restore points. So you don't want to do that,
if you have great need of the copies of the registry stored in there.
Don't touch the controls on that, unless you understand the
consequences of what you're doing. And if it wasn't working
in the first place, then obviously there is nothing left to lose.
(If it was turned off, then it would not be making snapshots
every day, of the critical stuff.)
System Restore can help you, if the registry got trashed. If your
system had it enabled for the last month or two, you'd have plenty
of copies of the registry files. If System Restore was completely
turned off (via the Tick Box or due to some malware or antivirus
disrupting things), then you'd have no Restore Points to choose from,
and no way to put the registry back exactly as it was. Some antivirus
software interferes with the proper function of System Restore.
System Restore is spread around a bit, and the second half of the
interface, is in Start
rograms:Accessories:System Tools:System Restore.
For example, there is a tick box "Restore my computer to an earlier time"
and when you use that, a "calendar" will show up. The highlighted days,
are when the OS made a Restore Point. Some software installations
also cause a Restore Point to be added. And those would be
ways to get back to a working system.
The actual data used, on my computer, is store in C:\System Volume Information.
Since my C: drive is FAT32, I can get in there for a look any time I want
If C: is NTFS, then it takes some additional work to get in there. The
security settings on there are presumably present to prevent malware
from getting in there (yeah, like that works...).
I only made the suggestion, that your burner and keyboard issues
were related, because at least one user went a little crazy with
Regedit, and that is the kind of stuff that happened.
Yes, reinstalling the system will fix all sorts of problems, but
it is also a lot of work. And you need all your program discs, if
you're doing a clean install. If you do a Repair Install with a
WinXP CD, that leaves the programs in place, but it takes you back
to the Service Pack level of the installer disc. You'd need lots of time
in Windows Update, to put all the security patches back.
In a world without malware, your OS would be a lot more stable, and
there would be fewer surprises. It's possible your problems have
something to do with that. A Repair Install won't remove malware.
A Clean Install should do a better job (the "nuclear option").
And making backups, is important so you don't lose any data files
or your email database (.pst or the like).
If your system is working, then leave it alone. If it is still
malfunctioning and driving you crazy, then eventually you'll have to
fix it.
In terms of evaluating hardware problems, you can use a second OS
as a comparison tool. For example, booting a Ubuntu LiveCD and
using that to run the computer, gives you an opportunity to see
the keyboard working, or burn a disc to see if the optical drive
is OK. That is handy for comparison purposes. On my first computer,
I had problems when I added some RAM, and about a year after the RAM
was added, I happened to boot a Linux LiveCD. And the system was
just as unstable in Linux and crash-worthy, as it was in Win98.
Based on that, I could tell I had a hardware issue (it turned out
the AGP slot had a design issue, when more than 512MB memory was
present). If one OS is unstable and freaky, and the other one
is smooth sailing, then chances are the freaky OS has software
issues. Blowing that one away, and doing a clean install, would
likely help it, as long as you have all the program discs needed
to re-install all the applications.
Linux LiveCD discs have the advantage, that you don't have to
"install" them, for them to work. They run right off the CD (and you
can't pull the CD out of the drive, until the OS is shut down).
If you were to click the Linux "install" button, that would only compound
your issues (because doing so, constitutes "multi-booting", and
you need to know a few things about computers, to deal with
that sort of thing). If you understand what multi-booting is,
how boot managers work, then you can install Linux if you want,
in a spare empty partition. Otherwise, just using the LiveCD
without installing anything, is a *lot* simpler.
*******
Your PS/2 connector could be going bad. That is always possible,
especially if you're had a few "incidents" where it got tugged on.
I don't have any tests to suggest, to see if that is a problem
or not. Wiggling it, might only make it worse, and so I'm not
going to suggest that. If the tracks leading up to where the
connector stack is soldered to the motherboard are cracked, that
can cause keyboard problems. (You'd have to pull the motherboard,
to do a visual inspection, and that isn't worth the effort.
If you've had the motherboard out of the box already, then
you'd be familiar with the effort involved.)
It's a little strange though, that your burner and keyboard
started acting up at the same time. Is any other hardware flaky ?
Paul
