Re: Registry Cleaner

From: Jim Byrd (jrbyrd_at_spamlessadelphia.net)
Date: 07/31/04 

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 11:01:34 -0700

Hi Edward - Well, the actual main driver is ntfs.sys; however, a parallel
install is IMO far-and-away the best solution AS LONG AS your machine is
bootable to the parallel system on your outboard HHD. See MVP Chris
Quirke's tutorials on Multi-booting and Maintenance OS's here:
http://cquirke.mvps.org/index.html (Some of these maintenance/recovery
considerations are why Chris isn't a great proponent of NTFS vice FAT32 :)
.) Also take a look at: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=119467 and the
referenced KB 305595, KB 301680 and KB 325879 as applicable for some info on
this.

This will ordinarily require at least some minimal functionality from your
original %BootDrive%. If there are problems then, unless your original HD
is majorly ill, you can <often, but not always> get to this state using the
Recovery Console fixboot and fixmbr functions if you've
installed the RC, by booting off of the orig install CD and selecting the RC
repair option. The message here is INSTALL THE RECOVERY CONSOLE.

Other approaches that are used which get around some of these problems are
to boot to a GNU/Linux system which incorporates the NTFS drivers (see here,
for example: http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/ and the very
common and recommended 3.4 version of KNOPPIX http://www.knoppix.net/ and
various Debian-based systems which will allow you to mount an NTFS volume
and access it).

For a Windows DOS based alternative boot, you'll probably need to
incorporate the NTFSDOSPro utility you referred to earlier into your DOS
system, or some other source of NTFS write drivers for Windows. I don't
know off-hand of any free ones, but look around - you may find something.
Chris' recomended BitDefender approach may be a relevant solution - I
haven't had time to try it out yet.

Proceed AT YOUR OWN RISK along this path. Fair warning - setting something
like this requires very careful planning and a fair amount of knowledge
about what you're doing. There is a serious risk of making your machine
unusable without a complete format/re-install. Mistakes here are often not
very forgivable, so use care. 

-- 
Please respond in the same thread.
Regards, Jim Byrd, MS-MVP
In news:enR%23sHwdEHA.712@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl,
Edward W. Thompson <thomeduk1@btopenworld.com> typed:
> Thanks Jim.  Re Registry Cleaners, I guess, as you say, I have been
> lucky.
>
> Re ERUNT I take note of what you advise.  As a matter of interest you
> mention NTFS drivers precisely what are these drivers and where can
> they be found?  I have a USB HDD that I can boot from (Yes,  my
> motherboard will allow me to boot from an external USB HDD) and have
> formatted it FAT 32 with a DOS OS (WIN98 version) to allow it to be
> used on other machines.  My principal machine has two SATA fixed disk
> drives each formatted NTFS.  I use the USB HDD for backup purposes
> which is fine unless the fixed drives will not boot, then I would
> ideally like to boot from my USB HDD and do whatever necesary to
> repair the system.  With the present arrangements and without
> appropriate NTFS-DOS 'drivers' it's not possible.
>
> I am thinking the best solution may be to partition the USB Drive and
> install a copy of WINXP on the primary partition intead of using DOS,
> while I could do this, the drive is 30GB, it will waste space as I
> suppose I will need to dedicate at least 2 GB for a WINXP
> installation.  I am beginning to wonder whether in the overall sense
> NTFS is such a good idea as if things go wrong it seems to present
> difficulties that weren't there in good ole DOS.
>
> Any thoughts on this?
>
>
> "Jim Byrd" <jrbyrd@spamlessadelphia.net> wrote in message
> news:OAf8iItdEHA.3916@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
>> Hi Edward - You can only do this from a DOS boot if your file system
>> is FAT32 OR you have NTFS drivers.  However, you can do a partial
>> restore to get back to being bootable by using the Recovery Console
>> if you've installed it, and then do a full restore.  (BTW, remember
>> to re-install the Recovery Console if you slipstream any of your
>> SP's into a local i386 folder.)
>>
>> Essentially, the approach is to put the ERDNT folder(s) where your
>> nightly ERUNT is saved inside %SystemRoot% and then use the Recovery
>> Console to first back up the existing hives in
>> %SystemRoot%\System32\Config and then replace them with the ones
>> from an appropriate ERDNT folder.  This won't restore the User
>> hives, but will let you boot so that you can then do a normal ERDNT
>> restore of all hives.  You can do it manually or you can automate
>> the process by using a      batch regcopy1.txt    command in
>> Recovery Console where   regcopy1.txt contains something like (in
>> this case E:\ is the %SystemRoot% for my Win2kProSP4 system, and I
>> save to both a Temp folder and a nightly named folder each night.
>> Here I'm just using the Temp which will have the last night's save
>> in it.):
>>
>> md tmp
>> copy e:\winnt\system32\config\system e:\winnt\tmp\system.bak
>> copy e:\winnt\system32\config\software e:\winnt\tmp\software.bak
>> copy e:\winnt\system32\config\sam e:\winnt\tmp\sam.bak
>> copy e:\winnt\system32\config\security e:\winnt\tmp\security.bak
>> copy e:\winnt\system32\config\default e:\winnt\tmp\default.bak
>>
>> delete e:\winnt\system32\config\system
>> delete e:\winnt\system32\config\software
>> delete e:\winnt\system32\config\sam
>> delete e:\winnt\system32\config\security
>> delete e:\winnt\system32\config\default
>>
>> copy e:\winnt\ERDNT\Temp\system e:\winnt\system32\config\system
>> copy e:\winnt\ERDNT\Temp\software e:\winnt\system32\config\software
>> copy e:\winnt\ERDNT\Temp\sam e:\winnt\system32\config\sam
>> copy e:\winnt\ERDNT\Temp\security e:\winnt\system32\config\security
>> copy e:\winnt\ERDNT\Temp\default e:\winnt\system32\config\default
>>
>>
>> See:  http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545
>> (Be very careful about your specific system's ERUNT naming
>> conventions which can depend upon just how your backup was saved,
>> manually vs. a scheduled task.)
>>
>>
>> As to your other comment - I think you've experienced very good luck
>> and/or are very careful in using such cleaners if you haven't had a
>> bad experience. We see a constant stream of screwed up Registries
>> because of them, and I don't think I know of an MVP who will
>> recommend their use.  YMMV, however. :)
>>
>>
>> --
>> Please respond in the same thread.
>> Regards, Jim Byrd, MS-MVP
>>
>>
>>
>> In news:um3d6jsdEHA.3864@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl,
>> Edward W. Thompson <thomeduk1@btopenworld.com> typed:
>>> I can't argue with your expereince but in my experience all Registry
>>> Cleaners I have tried have not given a single problem and all backup
>>> before making changes to the Registry.  Whether or not Registry
>>> Cleaners are really required is another matter and another debate.
>>> System Mechanic is likely to be as 'good' as any but it isn't free.
>>>
>>> As a matter of interest, how do you restore the Registry to a NTFS
>>> volume from DOS using ERUNT?  Whenever I boot to DOS I can't see the
>>> NTFS volumes and I don't see any 'available' software that allows
>>> reading and writing to NTFS volumes from DOS.  I know about NTFSDOS
>>> Professional but the price of that is outside of my means and the
>>> trial version only allows you to read NTFS, not write, at least that
>>> is my understanding.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "Jim Byrd" <jrbyrd@spamlessadelphia.net> wrote in message
>>> news:uenmwopdEHA.3944@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
>>>> Hi Charles - In my experience all of these Reg cleaners, even the
>>>> best, are fraught with danger.  I advise against using them except
>>>> in one specific instance, that is when you have one that is capable
>>>> of doing specific Reg searches, and you NEED (not just WANT) to
>>>> remove the remaining traces of something that didn't get
>>>> uninstalled correctly.  (and you didn't have foresight enough to
>>>> install it using Total Uninstall,
>>>> http://www.geocities.com/ggmartau/tu.html or direct dwnld here:
>>>> http://files.webattack.com/localdl834/tun234.zip, in the first
>>>> place.)
>>>>
>>>> Lastly, if you must screw around with your Registry, then at least
>>>> get Erunt/Erdnt, and run it before you do the Reg clean.  You'll
>>>> then have a true restore available to you.  Read below to see why
>>>> you might not just using the Reg cleaner's restore:
>>>>
>>>> Get Erunt here for all NT-based computers including XP:
>>>> http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/index.htm  I've set
>>>> it up to take a scheduled backup each night at 12:01AM on a weekly
>>>> round-robin basis, and a Monthly on the 1st of each month.  See
>>>> here for how to set that up:
>>>> http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/erunt.txt, and for
>>>> some useful information about this subject.
>>>>
>>>> This program is one of the best things around - saved my *** on
>>>> many occasions, and will also run very nicely from a DOS prompt
>>>> (in case you've done something that won't let you boot any more
>>>> and need to revert to a previous Registry) IF you're FAT32 OR have
>>>> a DOS startup disk with NTFS write drivers in an NTFS system.
>>>> (There is also a way using the Recovery Console to get back to
>>>> being "bootable" even without separate DOS write NTFS drivers,
>>>> after which you can do a "normal" Erdnt restore.)  (BTW, it also
>>>> includes a Registry defragger program).  Free, and very, very
>>>> highly recommended.
>>>>
>>>> FYI, quoting from the above document:
>>>>
>>>> "Note: The "Export registry" function in Regedit is USELESS (!) to
>>>> make a complete backup of the registry. Neither does it export the
>>>> whole registry (for example, no information from the "SECURITY"
>>>> hive is saved), nor can the exported file be used later to replace
>>>> the current registry with the old one. Instead, if you re-import
>>>> the file, it is
>>>> merged with the current registry, leaving you with an absolute mess
>>>> of old and new registry keys.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Please respond in the same thread.
>>>> Regards, Jim Byrd, MS-MVP
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In news:h2AOc.7262$N77.376643@news.xtra.co.nz,
>>>> Charles <lius@fvkp.com> typed:
>>>>> Can someone recommend a good freeware/shareware registry cleaner?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ---
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