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SCANREG not fixing registry

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7 replies

by aodhanoriain

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A driver for a USB device was installed. After restarting the system, Windows 98 did not start. Instead the Windows 98 Setup sceen was displayed with the following options: 1.Normal, 2.Logged (\BOOTLOG.TXT), 3.Safe Mode, 4.Step-by-step Confirmation,5.Command prompt only, 6.Safe command prompt only and the message, "Windows has detected a registry/configuration error. Choose option 5 and run SCANREG." When I did this the scanreg blue screen opened with message, "Scanning system files..." but there was no hard drive activity. There was still a command prompt available. When I ran SCANREG from this line, it froze the computer. Safe Command Prompt Only is the same story. Normal and Safe Mode fail to start Windows. I would like to know how to restart Windows, and reformatting is not an option.

7 replies

by meddjay

Oh man...I think when you typed in Scanreg where the curser was, you messed up the registry. And if you accidently did mess up the registry, then the option "reformatting" will look quite good to you as an option! Ok, first thing is first. If youhave a restart (emergency boot disk) that you made yourself when you installed windows the firt time you are ok. Or if you have one that possibly came with your computer. Put the boot floppy in the drive and start the computer. It will give you acouple of options, boot to command prompt only then you will probably need to reinstall windows over the existing copy. Now if you don't have a disk... you can borrow one from a friend who has the same version of windows on their computer, or download one at bootdisk.com. If you can't get to your cd rom to reinstall windows, then you will need to boot to command prompt and type in sys C. while in the a drive with the boot disk in a. Do this by typing setup.exe after the command prompt on theC drive. Then run scandisk from the DOS prompt as well. I hope this helps!

by aodhanoriain

Thanks for your suggestions. I've tried yours and the ones offered by others. None of them worked and I had to reformat the hard drive and re-instlall Windows. Thanks anyway.

by blackcurrant

Hi

Boot from a startup disk that also contains a copy of Scandisk and check the drive. Once this has finished, you should type:

C:

to take you to an MS-DOS prompt, then type scanreg /restore. Please note that by default Windows 98 will only save the previous 4 copies of the registry, plus a copy of the registry for the current session.

Hopefully, this will sort it out. As an insurance you should edit your scanreg.ini file and change MaxBackupCopies=5 to =30 (maximum is 99). To restore a registry that was backed up more than 5 reboots ago, the relevant registry will need to be extracted from a .CAB file thus:

cd\windows
extract /e c:\windows\sysbackup\rb0nn.cab

where nn = the backup number. Once the file has been extracted it can be restored.

If you do not have a backup of the registry that 'predates' installation of the USB device, you will have to reinstall windows, which of course, means you will not have to reformat.

by aodhanoriain

Thanks for your suggestions. I've tried yours and the ones offered by others. None of them worked and I had to reformat the hard drive and re-instlall Windows. Thanks anyway.

by pacalealaathotmail.c

you have installed the wrong driver!.
using scanreg made things worse.

now the only way out is to :
1. start and repair w98
(booting from floppy or cd)
then
2. stop windows from loading the usb driver

checking the file c:\bootlog.txt on
the last line, you will find
the name of the culprit.

hth

by aodhanoriain

Thanks for your suggestions. I've tried yours and the ones offered by others. None of them worked and I had to reformat the hard drive and re-instlall Windows. Thanks anyway.

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