Please expand my meager knowledge of registry settings

Gang - first. I must make a full confession - I am running a version of M$ XP Corp I 'found'. I had a really bad problem late Friday night installing a literally 'hot-off-the-presses' version of my anti-virus. I spent some significant time Saturday poking around to resolve said issue.

At some point I made a mistake; I was going through my registry and deleting all files specific to this AV so I could satisfy the .exe to install and I deleted an entire file instead of a specific key for PCC. I did not realize it as I had been sitting at my desk for twenty minutes ctrl+F'ing in regedit.

Now I cannot connect to the intarwebs on my machine. My modem works, and the NIC works as I used a Knoppix Live CD to verify the connection.

Here is my question: Can I repair XP with an install disk and fix this? Or am I going to need to reinstall XP? I can access all files on my computer, and know of no other issues.

Thanks for your comments and direction in this matter - I'd rather not reinstall, but can deal with it if neccessary.

I highly doubt you made a restore point, right? I know like two people that actually use that--The repair generally fixes windows files and stuff, but maybe it'll work anyways, XP is fun like that. You didn't disable any services relating to the matter? I do that shit a lot. Some sound advice, if I may. Fresh XP install = first registry backup.

I sometimes run into a problem with my wireless when I monkey around with things, it's 99.9% of the time resolved by reinstalling the driver--don't ask me why, it just works.

I never touch the reg myself. If the puter boots OK I'm happy.
I'm running Vista Ultimate. It is rocking my world...:rotflmao::fly::mod:

right click save target as....nuff said glass's off

Just keep hittin Alt+F4. Works for me everytime.

There's always a restore point you can use, just check the ones before your install !

Well, I has made my restore point size too small (~200 MB), so there is not one to use.

Han, I may be missing the joke, but right-click what?

Can you call an IT guy? Do you know of a computer geek that will work for food? A complete reinstall might work. I have had a similar situation with the work computer. He was able to "ghost the image" and got it up and running fairly quickly.

xp makes backups of your registry when you first installed it, so...

What you are doing - you start the Recovery Console, create a temporary folder, back up the existing registry files to a new location, delete the registry files at their existing location, and then copy the registry files from the repair folder to the System32\Config folder. When you have finished this procedure, a registry is created that you can use to start Windows XP. This registry was created and saved during the initial setup of Windows XP. Therefore any changes and settings that occurred after the Setup program was finished are lost.


The steps to do it:

1. Insert the wind@ws XP startup disk into the floppy disk drive, or insert the wind@ws XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.
Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted to do so. (usually delete or F8)

2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
3. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you want to access from the Recovery Console.
4. When you are prompted to do so, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.
5. At the Recovery Console command prompt, type the following lines, pressing ENTER after you type each line:

md tmp
copy c:\wind@ws\system32\config\system c:\wind@ws\tmp\system.bak
copy c:\wind@ws\system32\config\software c:\wind@ws\tmp\software.bak
copy c:\wind@ws\system32\config\sam c:\wind@ws\tmp\sam.bak
copy c:\wind@ws\system32\config\security c:\wind@ws\tmp\security.bak
copy c:\wind@ws\system32\config\default c:\wind@ws\tmp\default.bak

delete c:\wind@ws\system32\config\system
delete c:\wind@ws\system32\config\software
delete c:\wind@ws\system32\config\sam
delete c:\wind@ws\system32\config\security
delete c:\wind@ws\system32\config\default

copy c:\wind@ws\repair\system c:\wind@ws\system32\config\system
copy c:\wind@ws\repair\software c:\wind@ws\system32\config\software
copy c:\wind@ws\repair\sam c:\wind@ws\system32\config\sam
copy c:\wind@ws\repair\security c:\wind@ws\system32\config\security
copy c:\wind@ws\repair\default c:\wind@ws\system32\config\default

6. Type exit to quit Recovery Console. Your computer will restart.

Note This procedure assumes that wind@ws XP is installed to the C:\wind@ws folder. Make sure to change C:\wind@ws to the appropriate wind@ws_folder if it is a different location.

This will reset your registry to brand new, so you may need to install some programs or drivers, but hopefully will help.

Wow, DH - that is one hell of a detailed fix. I'll try it Sunday. Thank you for this help, each and all of you. *sniff*

If that doesn't work, you can try booting to the windows cd again, when loaded into windows setup hit enter on the first screen, f8 to accept the eula and if it shows you your version of windows in a rectangle on the next screen, you can hit R to do a repair install of windows. That will replace ALL windows files, including the registry. You will need to get the windows updates again, but can be usefull. Just make sure you backup any important data, because a repair install can sometimes fail half way through and make it impossible to load into windows without doing a full reinstall.