Re: Repair installation crashes disk

Steve Wright wrote:
Paul,

Thanks for your input and worthy comments.

Can I pick your brains a little further - if I have a corrupted registry, what is the best way to repair it without doing a repair installation?

Steve.

The Windows registry, consists of five files.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_registry

%SystemRoot%\System32\Config\:

# Sam – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM
# Security – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SECURITY
# Software – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE
# System – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM
# Default – HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT

There is an example here, of copying some files from a repair
directory, to the config directory. You'll notice in the
procedure, they make backup copies of the original files.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

I'm not an IT guy, so that is just a hint at the possibilities. Since the
repair files are smaller than the original ones, there should be
"side effects" from copying the repair ones. I don't know if the
intention is to use the original ones again at some point or not.

OK, I downloaded the Guided Help file 307545.exe, and in one of the
text files, it mentions:

"Then, restore the registry to a recent restore point that was created
before the registry became corrupted."

So to get around the mess, that copying the repair registry over would
make, they are suggesting you use a System Restore point, to restore the
original registry (a date from before this happened). That is how the
registry gets returned to its more normal, bloated self :-)

So once the "Repair" registry files are copied over, you reboot, and
run System Restore, to put the system back the way it was.

Paul


"Steve Wright" wrote:

I have recently been forced to perform a repair installation of XP Home due to a corrupted registry message.

The repair installation left we with no option but to format the hard disc and perform a full new clean installation.

When the machine tried to boot, the boot record (or whatever) has been cleaned and now the disk is totally inoperational.

So any ideas on how to repair the disk? The disk is an 500g Seagate an less than 2 years old with light use.

Let me be clear - the disk was working fine, until XP reformatted it. Now the disc is trashed.
.

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