Just wondering... My dad has an IBM Aptiva, probably about a 700mhz and 128 RAM on W98. Unfortunately, he likes to delete alot of things on his C: drive. Of course he gets into alot of trouble that way, but never seems to stop anyway. I tried to help him with scanreg/restore, but that actually crashed his computer. He has lost some functionality with some programs and right now can not even run the system restore CD's. So, am I overlooking something with scanreg/restore, or why has it crashed the computer. Am I going to have to rebuild his machine?? Your suggestions are appreciated.

He may have gone beyond restore this time. After you reload it and get it working, maybe you could hide everything important.

Thank you, that is a very good suggestion

One of the snags with scanreg /restore is that there can be trouble with the programs and files not matching with the registry. It is a useful feature but sometimes "over-used" or used without trying to match things up first. There is nothing to be lost by typing scanreg /fix (always best to try this before trying scanreg /restore). PLEASE try to stop dear old Dad deleting files, it can cause heaps of trouble as I'm sure you know.

hello; if your dad deleted core files from windows then he went beyond the limits,you will have to install windows and please teach him not to delete stuff manualy or you will have to be fixing hes pc everytime he does.

Yeah, scanreg/restore won't recover deleted files.

DAVEINCAPS Too true, a basic but very sensible point. For that matter my suggestion of using scanreg /fix won't recover deleted files either. At the best it will only restore the system to such a state that it might then be possible to reload the respective programs. Andrew. I rather fancy you are heading for a Windows reload (try just loading it over the top). This might need to be followed by reloading other programs that have missing files.