Yes, I tweaked my System Registry and now need help badly

[David Schwartz]

Hello everyone. I am a big fool. All I wanted to do yesterday was install
Norton Anti Virus 2007 and it wouldn't let me because of the system
registry. It told me what I had to do to tweak the registry and I gave it a
try, but, naturally I messed it up and now my computer is in big trouble.
This is what I was told to do. Run regedit, highlight HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, go
to Edit, then Permissions. I was told to look for System and
Administrators, but neither were listed, only "Everybody" or "Everyone", I
can't remember. I believe I unchecked Full Control and Read, and checked
Special Permissions. Then went to Advanced and checked both "Inherit from
parent......." and "Replace permission entries on ......" (Please, don't ask
me why I did this stuff by myself. I must have been out of my mind.) Then
closed everything down, maybe restarted.

XP did restart, apparently normally, but all of my icons on the desktop
turned into that white generic icon that you sometimes see before XP get up
and rolling and turns those white icons into the colored icons that usually
appear. Nothing works. It doesn't know what to do with anything. My hard
drive is visible, I can see my folders, but when I double click on them to
open, they just turn to that light yellow folder. I went to System Restore
and it asks me what program I want to use to open the program. But for some
reason, the Internet Explorer icon is good and my internet works. I can
actually connect to the computer from my home using pc Anywhere! The
recycle bin icon is good and the My Computer icon is good, although it takes
almost a minute for my computer to become visible when opening it.

How can I get back to the system registry and undo what I did?

Can I get system restore to work and would it fix the problem.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hello everyone. I am a big fool. All I wanted to do yesterday was install
Norton Anti Virus 2007 and it wouldn't let me because of the system
registry. It told me what I had to do to tweak the registry and I gave it a
try, but, naturally I messed it up and now my computer is in big trouble.
This is what I was told to do. Run regedit, highlight HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, go
to Edit, then Permissions. I was told to look for System and
Administrators, but neither were listed, only "Everybody" or "Everyone", I
can't remember. I believe I unchecked Full Control and Read, and checked
Special Permissions. Then went to Advanced and checked both "Inherit from
parent......." and "Replace permission entries on ......" (Please, don't ask
me why I did this stuff by myself. I must have been out of my mind.) Then
closed everything down, maybe restarted.

XP did restart, apparently normally, but all of my icons on the desktop
turned into that white generic icon that you sometimes see before XP get up
and rolling and turns those white icons into the colored icons that usually
appear. Nothing works. It doesn't know what to do with anything. My hard
drive is visible, I can see my folders, but when I double click on them to
open, they just turn to that light yellow folder. I went to System Restore
and it asks me what program I want to use to open the program. But for some
reason, the Internet Explorer icon is good and my internet works. I can
actually connect to the computer from my home using pc Anywhere! The
recycle bin icon is good and the My Computer icon is good, although it takes
almost a minute for my computer to become visible when opening it.

How can I get back to the system registry and undo what I did?

Can I get system restore to work and would it fix the problem.

Yes.

 

[Guest]

Press Ctrl+At+Del, then click on the task manager button.
Click on "File", then hold Ctrl and click "New task (run...)"

This opens a command prompt, from which you can run exe files.

Now you can either:
If you are feeling brave and want to understand what you did, type
regedit.exe and hit enter. Regedit should open, and you can change the
permissions back to what they were before you started.
Or:
If you you want to just get it fixed for sure, type
c:\windows\system32\restore\rstrui.exe and hit enter. System restore will run
and you can use it to go back to how things were.

 

[David Schwartz]

I guess I didn't make myself clear enough.
When I click on System Restore it asks me what program to use to open it. I
have no answer.
When I try and run regedit again, it asks the same thing. I have no answer.
How do I get System Restore to run?

 

[Malke]

I guess I didn't make myself clear enough.
When I click on System Restore it asks me what program to use to open it. I
have no answer.
When I try and run regedit again, it asks the same thing. I have no answer.
How do I get System Restore to run?

First, is all your data backed up on external media? If not then you
need to retrieve your data before doing anything else. It is completely
possible to get back data even when Windows won't boot. Here are a few ways:

1. Pull the drive and slave it in a computer running a working install
of XP. Depending on the target drive's characteristics, you may need a
drive adapter; i.e., laptop-to-IDE or a SATA controller card, etc. A
usb/firewire external drive enclosure works very well, too. Use the
working Windows Explorer to copy the data to the rescue system's hard
drive and then burn the data to cd or dvd.

2. Often XP will not boot with a slaved drive that has a damaged file
system. In that case, boot the target computer with either a Bart's PE
or a Linux live cd such as Knoppix and retrieve the data that way. Here
is general information on using Knoppix for this:

You will need a computer with two cd drives, one of which is a cd/dvd-rw
OR a usb thumb drive with enough capacity to hold your data OR an
external usb/firewire hard drive formatted FAT32 (not NTFS). To get
Knoppix, you need a computer with a fast Internet connection and
third-party burning software. Download the Knoppix .iso and create your
bootable cd. Then boot with it and it will be able to see the Windows
files. If you are using the usb thumb drive or the external hard drive,
right-click on its icon (on the Desktop) to get its properties and
uncheck the box that says "Read Only". Then click on it to open it. Note
that the default mouse action in the window manager used by Knoppix
(KDE) is a single click to open instead of the traditional MS Windows'
double-click. Otherwise, use the K3b burning program to burn the files
to cd/dvd-r's.

http://www.knoppix.net
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ - Bart's PE Builder

Once your data is safe, do a Repair Install:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm - Repair Install
How-To

If the Repair Install doesn't work, you'll need to flatten the system
and start over with a Clean Install. Do not install anything Norton.
Norton and McAfee are the worst choices for security software you could
make. Recommended antiviruses are NOD32, Kaspersky, and Avast if you
need a free one. Use the XP SP2 Windows Firewall unless you want a more
complex firewall, then look at third-party ones.

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install How-To
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Reinstalling_Windows -
What you will need on-hand

As you can see, you will need some extra equipment and some good
computer skills. If the procedures look too complex - and there is no
shame in admitting this isn't your cup of tea - take the machine to a
professional computer repair shop (not your local version of BigStoreUSA).


Malke