SUN jre broke registry

[Carsten]

Hi Folks,

I have a really annoying problem.

I installed the SUN j2ee appserver incl jdk and jre for evaluation
purposes (playing around). Then an update to jre 1.5.06 was suggested.
Did that.
Was too lazy do to "custom install" so the stupid installer installed
that update in a different jre folder. Didn't want several different
jre's flying around. So uninstalled and reinstalled the update. Then
the jre didn't work even though everything seemed to be in good order,
vars, paths, plugins u name it. Didn't suspect anything critical at
that stage. So uninstalled everything, appserver, jdk, jre, update.
Complete cleanup (or so I thought). Reinstalled evrything, but it's
still not working.
Now I started to wonder and had a closer look what the story was.
Problems seems to be that the SUN installer messed up the registry. To
be more precise the keys HKCR ".jar", ".jnlp", "jarfile", "JavaPlugin"
and "JavaPlugin.150_06", maybe a few others, are completely
unaccessible. They appear to be there but they cannot be deleted,
overwritten or modified in any shape or form. When I try to set
properties the system says I haven't permissions to view them but I can
set them (now here's some logic). Ok, tried that. Regedit then shows no
owners. not even "CREATOR" or "SYSTEM". But then again the system says
I can't view them anyway. No matter what I try here (means assigning
user objects, modify access rights) it gives either "error" or "acces
denied". Needless to say the SUN installer couldnt fix it either.
Tried a few third party registry tools, no joy. Tried the registry api
functions like "RegistryOpenEx" or "RegistryDelete" directly from a
small c program, no joy. Gives error 5 "access denied".

Is there any hope I wonder? Any chance to get rid of these keys?

Because as it stands I will never have java on this box again unless
I'm willing to fry the entire installation. I mean it might not have
been very clever what I did to begin with, but how can the system allow
registry api calls that render keys useless? And what the heck was that
SUN installer "thinking".

cheers

Carsten

 

[needlove]

try this, and if I'm wrong search for othe registry cleaning tools from sun
java: http://www.java.com/en/download/help/5000041000.xml

 

[Carsten]

try this, and if I'm wrong search for othe registry cleaning tools from sun
java: http://www.java.com/en/download/help/5000041000.xml

Nope, that one didn't work out. Tried to find "other registry tools
from sun", no joy.

Thx anyway.

Just wondering is there a way of "editing" the registry with
'unauthorized' tools, say using Linux or maybe a Windows XP live cd
(e.g. BartPE)?

Since any windows program would rely on the win32 registry api calls I
think I have no hope using any of these registry cleaners regedit
alternatives that are around - unless there is something about
permissions that I don't know about.
I think my best bet would be some piece of software that bypasses the
win32 api to access the registry. Other than that it will be the repair
install option and some work to do after that, don't really fancy
that...

Thx in advance

Carsten

 

[Carsten]

Hi Folks,

I solved it and I want to share this information since it might be
helpful for others.

It was several corrupted registry keys indeed. Corrupted as in having
no permissions at all. That made it impossible to even grant
permissions with regedit.exe (catch 22). Even uninstallers and the
usual registry cleaners had no way of restoring or deleting those keys.

What did the trick was the MS tool "subinacl.exe" from the windows
ressource kit. It can be downloaded from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...56-d8fe-4a91-93cf-ed6985e3927b&displaylang=en

Wrote a little script for that tool that did for every key (and each
subkey under that key) the following ("jarfile"-key as an example):

subinacl /keyreg \HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\jarfile\shell
/grant=administrators=f
subinacl /keyreg \HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\jarfile\shell\open
/grant=administrators=f
subinacl /keyreg \HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\jarfile\shell\open\command
/grant=administrators=f

Funny enough, this tool was perfectly able to restore the permissons
even though in other threads people (MSVP's even) suggested either
using restore points or reinstalling from scratch.

Once all those keys were fixed I could delete all of them and reinstall
a jre from scratch. Now java is working just fine again.

cheers anyway

Carsten