Fixing a win95c reg w/o reinstalling

[Axel]

Searched our little board here and I can't find anything that worked, so here it goes -

I believe my win95C registry is slowly going to pieces on me and I can't afford for it to go completely south on me.

Running a HP Vectra VL 500 mHz pentiumIII, 128mb RAM
Running win95C

In the system tools pull down, the only item left there is system agent because I just installed the Plus! pack as a possible fix.

All my other system tools from this menu are gone, but still work on a file level.

Checked the registry and the correct entries appear to be there.

I'm certain I have no known viruses.

File system appears clean and I do regular scandisks/defrags at full opt.

I have no scanreg program on this system - I looked.

I don't have a deep desire to go back to an old version of my system.dat files.

Two questions - what might have caused the system tools menu to disappear? Any ideas on rebuilding just a little part of my registry? -

Any thoughts on opening an old registry copy and just importing that portion of the key to rebuild that menu item?

[Axel]

Forgot to mention - previously have kernal32 errors on this box, but they seem to have stopped.

[Mntsnow]

how about installing TweakUI and having it rebuild your Icon database file?.....Sorry I'm gasping at straws right this moment on this one http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif

Mntsnow

[Axel]

This is a vectra VLi8, found out these new-fangled machines MIGHT have a BIOS issue -

flashed the BIOS - not sure that did anything to help, but the system does appear to be working a bit faster -

Also - went in and added the short-cuts to system tools manually - had to build/select the icon for scandisk manually, so, something got corrupted.

I just hope the kernal32.dll errors by explorer stop forcing program closures.

At least this helped me find where the IT dudes hid the cab files - they didn't give us WIN95 disks - they don't want us re-installing any games...... - right.....

We'll see if that does the trick - I welcome any other ideas, however -

Had one suggestion to go into add/remove windows set-up - uncheck and re-check the accessories tab and reboot - that restored some of the stuff I don't use, but not scandisk & defrag - really weird......

[Susan]

One way I know of is to rename the system and win ini files and then run the setup program from DOS at that point, but this leaves the system booting without some of the proper device drivers.

It's been a while since I did it that way, so I don't remember which ones, but am positive that the video drivers would need to be reinstalled.

This procedure always worked for me to bring a hosed WIN95 back to life.

[Richard_Cranium72]

I fought a Compac with registry prob's then it started booting to safe mode.Do ReForma, run ok 2-4days, then upon prog installation, only boot back to safe mode. The day I removed the used memory and went to on board 8mb RAM, the machine worked fine. Wierd. On this one before format, I saved the large files to another faster machine from hd to hd using drop&drag. U know some had registry info that was lost so then was the program I was trying to save. Can you transfer files sucesfully like this.. thanks DrVette

[Target]

There was a post here a while back about using regedit to do a compare and the rebuilding for you, but I am not certain that it will work for win95 though.

The gyst of the process is that you use regedit to export your current registry to a file on the C:\ drive and name it TEMP.REG

Then you copy the user.dat and system.dat files to the c:\ drive as well. for back-up purposes.

Then, you re-boot cleanly into dos mode (using F5 or F8) at startup, and type the following command

regedit /c TEMP.REG

Its supposed to completely scan your machine for hardware/software, compare it to what is in the TEMP.REG file, and make the necessary adjustments to rebuild your registry. It can take literally a couple hours to complete, and appears to hang at different times while going through the rebuild, but it plows through and eventually completes modifying the registry, user.dat, and system.dat.

You could give that a shot. If it fails, you can always boot into safe mode, and copy back the original user.dat and system.dat files, then import your original registry using regedit from the C:\TEMP.REG file.

You might be able to check first if you have regedit on your system, and if it has the compare option by going to a dos window, and typing REGEDIT /?

That should list out all the command line switch options available.

Not sure why you don't necessarily want to do a re-install of win95 as a last resort, as you can do so without losing your current software and shortcuts. Might not be a bad idea if your registry is really hosed or you continue to experience kernal errors.

To do that, you simply boot to dos, rename the file WIN.COM to something else, and then perform the win95 install. It installs over the top of itself, replacing system files and rebuilding your short-cuts and so on.

[Axel]

typically only data files such as saved games , docs, images, etc. etc. should be okay . You'll have trouble with *.exe and *.com which require registry entries and *.dll files in certain directories to run properly.

[BBA]

Axel...well...

Being one of them IT dudes...
I can only imagine one of their responses to a 'user dude' flashing his brand new corporate PC's bios. Not a pretty picture.

We have a few 'user dudes' at work who "know about PC's" and we 'IT DUDES' seem to have a deep seated resentment. We do not generally like to get along with these 'user dudes' who continually just have to mess with their PC's, and everyone elses around them.

Now, I don't know what kind of company you work at, so I can't make any definites here, but listen to this: Most of the technically savvy users we have would like knowing more about our network and OS and such, but they have jobs to do, not involving their quest for PC knowledge. The ones with the uncontrollable urges to experiment (I could be described that way in reality too, but at the proper time and place...home...) seem to cause repetitive problems for not only us, but our network performance and stability. It really is more complicated and easy to wreck than most people would think.

Trust me, it is better for you to have your IT dudes come and setup the PC so you don't loose productive time, than to be the object of blame (and possible responsibility) for messing it up.

Now, hopefully, that is not going to be the description of you, now is it? http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif


[This message has been edited by BBA (edited 01-21-2000).]

[Eli]

I'd try Target's suggestion first. I heard about that little scanreg trick about a month ago, and it does help. I also ran it on a W95 machine and it worked well. Definitely worth a shot.

[cornelius]

I tried Target's renaming win.com sugestion with my win98 problem and it worked great, I was able to save my stuff before the necessary full reinstall.

[BBA]

Hey...would you guys stop for a minute!

Part of his original question was:

In the system tools pull down, the only item left there is system agent because I just installed the Plus! pack as a possible fix.

All my other system tools from this menu are gone, but still work on a file level.

Why, would they be gone possibly as a preventive action the 'IT DUDES' took to prevent the system from being messed with? Maybe that was all on purpose?

He left out some important info that only surfaced in a later reply:

Also - went in and added the short-cuts to system tools manually - had to build/select the icon for scandisk manually, so, something got corrupted.

I just hope the kernal32.dll errors by explorer stop forcing program closures.

At least this helped me find where the IT dudes hid the cab files - they didn't give us WIN95 disks - they don't want us re-installing any games...... - right.....


Axel, I think all relevant info should have been provided by you in the first post, and the fact that this is a system installed by and configured by IT staff of your company points to the obvious that you could cause problems by taking these actions.

Also, I have dealt with several VLI8SF, VLI8M other VLI8 PC's and have found no bios problems to exist.

I just think it's clear y'all are unwittingly helping to hack a corporate PC to death.

[Axel]

Lets drop the references to the IT dudes -
We don't have any locally - we have contractors and they call me for help on occassion, so lets move past that.

The IT dudes didn't "set up this machine" - we get it "set up" with the "official company load" (and all that implies) and get it in a box with no software. HP sets these up in bulk for us ( 2000 last time ). Typically they only strip off the games before senting it out to us.

The system used to have the disk utilities under system tools.

I've been having kernal32.dll problems for a while now and believe them to be the root of my trouble, but I don't have too many places I can take this issue without fraging my machine further, IT guys or no IT guys.

So - send me some kernal32.dll ideas - running on a copy of win95C with cab files, but no CD -

Let me know what else you might need in the way of details -

Gotta run to a meeting -

Thanks for the suggestions & keep them coming.

Sincerely - Axel

[Axel]

I've scoured the MS FAQ's and come to the following conclusion - TWEAKui and MS Power Toys for 95 trashed a few things in my control panel.

I've uninstalled tweakui and power toys and seem to be having fewer problems, I've got a new issue I'll post above that I'm having fun with now. Thought I'd close this thread down.

[Nathan]

Hi Axel!

Little board? I don't think there is nothing little about it. hehe

Well it sounds like you need to reformat and install the OS and programs again. You can spend hours chasing down a problem and not be any closer to solving it. So it's better to just rebuild the machine. But seeing as you are not given the power to do this, then there isn't much to do about it. There's a lot I can say about this situation, but I'll keep it to myself for the moment.

Well said BBA, as usual. "IT dudes" understand why the network environment is some much more difficult. "User dudes" usually either don't know or don't care about it. While I don't care much for NT, it locks out those users who want to "tweak" their systems.

[This message has been edited by Nathan (edited 01-25-2000).]

[deep_sky]

if your kernel32.dll is throwing exceptions like it is going out of style, it might be corrupted. i had all these stupid errors like about every 5 min until i replaced it.

if you want to give this a shot, then read the following:

go to http://solo.abac.com/dllarchive and download the correct version of your kernel32.dll and the instructions to replace the old version. once replaced, it should stop complaining unless something else is bothering it....

try this if you want and let us know how it goes...

[LED]

You might try going into C Promt and type

Scan Reg/Fix

then:

ScanReg/Opt

[Axel]

Thanks for the ideas, guys -
Here is the path I'm following -
Had a friend point me towards winfile.com for a new kernel32.dll file from the first win95 service pack, and that fixed a bunch of my problems. Had a fellow sysopter send me a copy of ODBCCP32.dll to replace the corrupt one I still have - It is a higher version than the one I have, so I have to research if that matters.

Unfortunately, this system I can't simply rebuild and reinstall - too much stuff on it that I won't have time to rebuild/reload for a few months. A simple back-up and reload isn't really something I can afford to take a week fo downtime to do on this one.

Seems also that win95 C doesn't have scanreg on it - it doesn't exist on my system.

So far so good - making improvements every day. "thought tweakui was an improvement - but that was a very wrong assumption on my part. - I won't be recommending that in the future. WAY to many bugs and a wrecked registry for my trouble." ;(

Does anyone remember the autoexec entry to disable the boot win95 logo screen? - that's another thing I have to look up again.

[This message has been edited by Axel (edited 01-26-2000).]

[Jin Vitas]

My goodness.. well if you want a Clean registry do this.

Restart to F8,Command prompt only

cd windows
attrib system.dat -s -h -r
ren system.dat system.123
cd..
copy system.1st c:\windows\system.dat
reset

Follow windows directions.. and once you make it back to windows..
do a
Start|Find|files and folders
*.reg
Edit | Select ALL
File|merge
back into registry.. wala!!.. brand new registry with saved user settings!.. any apps that don't work reinstall.

Jin-Vitas
MCSE, A+, HP Star, 3Com, CCA, ASE, CCNA

[Nathan]

Axel

To get rid of the logo at startup, start/find files & folders;

Logo.sys

Then delete it.

[Nathan]

Those kernal32 errors are a real pain. Hopefully you'll get it taken care of, but in my experience chasing that error message most of the time takes a lot of time with no results. Sometimes I think another file blows up and causes that message to come up when indeed it's another file(s) that are to blame.

Let us know what happens and good luck. Hope you nail that one.

[grogiinsky]

I just skimmed your replies and I hope I didn't miss anything, but as far as the system menu goes, you can obviously rebuild it by hand using Start->Settings or just using explore on c:\windows\Start Menu->Programs. This is obvious.

If your registry is corrupted, you've got problems if you don't have a recent backup. If you're using win98, you can boot into DOS and run regscan and it will give you a list of recent backups.

Otherwise, there are programs around to fix the registry, one from Microsoft: RegFix I think. That one in particular doesn't do very much but might solve a minor problem. There are others you can download that are more substantial.