I posted yesterday about my registry problems. here is my origional post.
on a cold boot or a restart my computer will come up and give me the following error:
"Windows has encountered a problem accessing your registry. Click ok and windows will restart and correct the error for you."
Well i click ok and it will then boot correctly. Or it appears to. when u start things up all the settings, updated drivers and many other options have been reset. and not anything that would be related to the same thing. things like the video driver, and the dial up networking stuff. two seperate systems. I've tried completely formating my hard drive and re-loading the operating system. nothing works.
any tips would be greatly apprishiated. if anyone knows a good Registry Cleaner Program please send a link to me.
thanks in advance.
I've also posted this message on the Windows 9x board because when I reloaded my computer I upgradded from 98 to me

since then people have told me i installed Windows incorrectly, here is the steps i took
booted from boot disk,
Fdisk and erased primary partition, rebooted,
fdisk and made a new partition, rebooted,
formated C:
setup.exe and run win setup program as instrcted. even did a full install with all options except for the web tv enhansement. still get the same message.
i was also told to try running a scanreg\fix or a scanreg\restore. did both. still have the same error. I've been told it could be a master boot record virus, if so is there any way to remove it. i am not familliar with those types of viruses. Can Anyone help.

Did you have the same problem also with windows 98?.. i have very good experience reloading windows 98 in different subdirectory (windows1, windows2....)i get that way rid of my old problems and keep my data (you can then erase the old windows subdirectory to recover the disc space... if your computer runs well with windows 98 just pas up the ME "upgrade".
Regards Miro

This is what I would do:
1= Remove all cards except video.
2= Run a program called WIPE.EXE that can be downloaded from http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/wipe.exe
3= Do a clean install (be sure to choose "Y" for large disk support)
4= Add devices (cards) back into your system one at a time. Insert cards according to importance from the AGP=0 slot to the lowest slot of importance.
5= Before doing so disable everything that you can in your BIOS. Turn those items on as you need them. For instance if you have a sound card and on board sound than disabling onboard sound would be wise!
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Wipe will work on non IBM drives. Otherwise you can get similar utilities from the company that made your hard disk! The reason for this step is to zero fill the drive so that no data remains intact including zero track!

Hi Timberwolf:

It looks like you have done a proper reinstall of Windows. That should tell you that the problem is in no way related to the operating system. Future reinstalls will prove fruitless, and will most likely result in the same problem

Some have suggested that you have a Master Boot Record virus. While this may seem an attractive diagnosis, boot sector viruses are generally pretty rare and I doubt that they are causing the problem here.

The bad news is that there is probably no quick fix for the problem, and unless you are pretty saavy about hardware, you might want to consider professional help with your problem.

That being said, there are a number of things that can cause a system instability like the one you've encountered. My first suggestion would be to enter the BIOS for your computer as it boots and reset the BOIS to their default settings. . Generally these are the most stable, and some BIOS enhancements can cause the instability you've encountered. If there is a BIOS based anti-virus program, disable it. If after resetting BIOS and rebooting you still get the error message then you will have to look elsewhere.

Incompatible or damaged hardware or drivers can also cause this message. One of the most likely suspects is the RAM. As the computer boots, it loads things into memory, including the registry. If one or more of the sticks of RAM are damaged, the system might have difficulty accessing the data written to it. I don't know if this is a new system, but check and make sure that your memory is compatible with the host bus (i.e. 66Mhz - 133MHz). If your system is a first generation Athlon, and you are using cheap memory, that could be the problem. Early Athlon processors and their motherboards are INCREDIBLY finnicky about memory, a brand name like Crucial is called for. Irrespective of that, if you are running two or more sticks of memory, remove all but one and reboot. Check each stick successivly and see if it will boot clean with any of them. If so, then it's just a matter of isolating the bad stick.

If that doesn't work, then we need to look elsewhere. If you can, get ahold of a Win98 startup disk that has scandisk on it. Boot the from the floppy and it should set up a RAMdrive, probably on D:\>. Run scandisk in DOS, including the surface scan. This will take quite a while, but will mark any bad sectors so that the system will not write to them. Try rebooting again.

If that does not work, remove every piece of hardware from it's slot except the following:

Processor
RAM
Videocard
Hard Drive
Floppy Drive

Try booting the computer. If you still get the registry error, install a different Video Card, any Videocard, borrow one or buy a cheap one. Install it and see if that solves the problem.

If it does not, then I would suspect that the motherboard or processor has gone bad.

Good Luck to you, I hope that this helps.

-TimeRider

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I know this is a longshot but its easy to try and easy is good
go here and make a "ultimate boot disk">>>>>>>

http://www.startdisk.com/Web2/ubd/ubd.htm

It has a few features worth noting,one is a auto registry fix(compares its good one to yours and corrects)and two,has a self installing boot virus checker as well as a diag for all the onboard hardware to help nail a potential problem down.Giver a go and let us know how it works,ive been dying to try it out myself..
later,

Hi Timberwolf:

I almost forgot, if the computer boots cleanly with the hardware removed, then do as the "Tech formerly know as Price" suggest and replace each card successively.

Unless you are really good with your BIOS, do not as he suggests, go in and start turning things off. Trust me on this, Prince has some unusual ideas, and although they might work for him, I wouldn't endorse such foolishness.

I would also pass on the wipe.exe. If you want to debug your boot sector, e-mail me and I'll send you instructions. It's very simple to do, all you need is two things that are already on your computer and you will have to reinstall your OS afterwards. I am always leary of 3rd party software, especially when offerred up by someone who doesn't give you the benefit of an email address to contact him with questions. I mean after all, if he screws up your computer you won't even have anyone to yell at. For all you know wipe . . . might just wipe your backside.

Good Luck to you, I hope that this helps.

-TimeRider

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Time rider,
I just realized. You really are an ass. I thought that you should know that. The reason that you should know this info. is so you can work on your people skills.
What you said is long winded, over powering, insultive and puts me and the original poster down. You assume to much. You assume that the poster can't administer his BIOS. You would not recomend using WIPE, yet IBM, Maxtor, Seagate and W.D. do!
Odds are that you are a complete nut job. I really do not care for you at all. Nor do I respect you. If you don't like my screen name I really could care less. My E Mail is none of your business. I do not choose to use any of my addresses in disscussion forums. If you like you can message me on this forum.
Refering to me as "Prince" is simply adding to the insults that you provide this forum.
I will be watching your posts and when nessary will request that they be removed.
You need not refer to me at all nor will I refer to you at all and in this way we can keep the peace.
Posting the reply to the topic in the way I did declaired that, "This is what I would do!" You could have simply posted what you would do. How you could connect what you would do to what I would do is beyond the scope of the post.
You might have computer skills yet you are not the only one. If you feel that you can speak for others like Miro, put others down and belive that you are allways right than you might do well with this statement.....
"Get some help sicko!"
To all others:
I want to say that I am sorry that I had to reply to this post like this. Time Rider is really pissing me off and I am as sick of him as he is of me.
A message from Time Rider's web site:
"If I had my Life to live over again, I'd try to make more mistakes next time."-author unknown.
This person belives that he is God's gift to the world.....He is not!
Happy Easter

My Dear Prince:

Actually, my reasons for being "long winded" as you put it, were because I don't know how much experience the user has. Neither do you, I might add. Nor do I claim that I am the only one with computer knowledge. On the other hand, Tommy reminded me the other day that it was wrong of me to assume that evryone had the same level of experience that I do, and that I would better serve the people asking for help if I explained things more fully. I think he was right and I stand corrcted. And I think that you should listen to him too. Your advice is often circumspect and does not take into account the experience level of the user. I'd rather say too much than too little.

I think that your suggestion to "disable everything that you can in your BIOS," is an irresponsible one. If you want to be angry with me for disagreeing with you, that's your business. But you are also disagreeing with just about every respected tutorial I have ever seen, that suggests one should only make small changes in the BIOS not large ones. To suggest that anyone do this, especially when you have no knowledge of their level of experience is not very good advice. It's a good way to really screw up a PC and quite frankly I expected better of you.

As far as my references to you, if I feel you are giving bad advice I will continue to say so, and I will state the reasons why. My interests have little to do with keeping peace with you, I am more interested in giving quality computer advice to those in need. If you see an error in my posts, I would encourage you to state your opinion as well. People can take the two opposing beliefs under advisement and decide for themselve the course of action best suited for their particular problem. A piece of advice however, try to be a little nicer about it, you sometimes come across as being a bit arrogant.

I don't feel I put the original poster down at all. If Timberwolf feels that way, I should hope that he or she would say so. I seriously doubt that he or she needs you to speak for them anymore than Miro needs me to speak for him. Take a lesson from your post and don't try to drag others into your rage.

The last thing you said to me, was that you had no time for TimeRider. So why should what I say matter to you at all? I have no doubt that you are pretty saavy about PC's. That part of you I respect. But I have been reading your posts for a long time and I got news for you, I'm not the only one who needs to brush up on my people skills as you put it.

I firmly believe that if I am going to offer advice to people, I have an obligation to put an email address. It isn't a matter of whether or not it's their business. It's a matter of credibility. People have e-mailed me for more specific instruction, to obtain files and believe it or not, to thank me.

I find it surprising that you would say that because several large hard drive producers recommend a certain peice of software, that makes it good. Yet at the same time you will regularly lambast Microsoft for it's recomendations. Let's say for the sake of argument that Timberwolf had an extended partition on his hard drive. How would resetting the master boot record with wipe, deal with that? Perhaps it would delete everything eh? But you don't mention that. You should also note that I told Timberwolf that "I am always leary of 3rd party software." It was an opinion, and the decision to ultimately use it is his or hers as the case may be.

If you want to try to have my posts removed, I guess that's your business. But who does that serve? Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make them wrong, or bad. It just means they have a different opinion, no?

My tongue in cheek needling about your nic is just that, needling. It's pretty harmless and I think that you overreacted. Prince is much easier to remember, most people will understand the reference, and it's easier to type. I didn't pick a string of punctuation marks for your nick . . . you did. It reminded me of the Artist formerly known as Prince. It could be worse, at least I'm not calling you something vile or obscene. Prince is a noble term, you should be flattered.

Lastly, we are all God's gift to the world, at least we should be, and God's gift to all of us, is the world. You are far too angry right now . . . I really hope that you can get past it.

Good Luck to you, and please be safe!

-TimeRider

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To all:

I would like to apologize to all who have visited this thread today. Obviously "Prince" is very upset and took exception to my contrdictions of his "What I would do" post. In my job and in my life I have had many opportunities to be of service to others. I have no obligaton to post advice here, and I do so of my own accord and without compensation beyond the satisfaction received when one helps another.

To set the record straight, I have subsequently researched "Wipe" and found two things to note. The first is that IBM recommends this for use on drives up to 8GB. The second is that it will completely wipe the data from the physical drive. Therefore I stand by my statements that using Wipe and making radical BIOS changes are bad advice and could cause a less experienced user to exacerbate the problems that they already have. I contend that the "Tech" has an obligation to provide complete advice, including warnings whenever such advice has the potential for unanticipated and possibly catastrophic results.

Further, I would like it to be known that I am not "sick" of Prince. I disagree with much of what he has said here, and it is unfortunate that he would turn a difference of opinion about a technical issue into a character debate. I will not engage in such a debate, I have in the past, but I shall endeavor to choose the high road here. I do believe that anyone has the right to disagree with advice posted here by anyone, including my posts. I am not angry at his indictment of my character, but I am disappointed. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I readily admit, that I am sometimes a bit of a wise guy, but I refuse to apologize for my life, that's who am for good or ill.

Last year, I spent some time at a resort in Lutsen MN. On the wall were some words that I found to be inspirational. Prince cut and pasted a small portion of those words in his post here, as though they were somehow eveidence of an overinflated ego on my part. I would like to share with you the entire script, so that it's context can be understood.

I'd Pick More Daisies

If I had my Life to live over again, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I know of very few things I would take seriously. I would be crazier. I would be less hygenic. I would take more chances. I would take more trips. I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets. I would burn more gasoline. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I am one of those people who lives prophylactically, sensibly and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments and if I had it to do over again I'd have more of them. In fact I would try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another instead of living so many years ahead of each day.

I have been one of those people who never go anyplace without a thermometer, hot water bottle, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had it to do over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would play hooky more. I wouldn't get such good grades except by accident. I would ride on more merry-go-rounds. I'd pick more daisies.

- Author Unknown

Take Care and Be Safe!

-TimeRider

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Wow,
You really said a mouth full. Pontification seems to be the best thing that you can offer including your wise-ass comments.
I think that for you to have the last word is your mission. I am refering to Time Rider in the event that someone is tuning in.
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I will stick with my original post as being on the money.
#1. Setting the BIOS to default if the mother board has onboard video and/or sound or any other feature will not allow the machine to boot correctly or cause IRQ conflicts. After resetting the BIOS to default the user would then need to enter the BIOS to set it correctly. As a computer wiz you should know that without debate.
#2. Disabling unused BIOS features (depends on the hardware)will allow for better distribution of a finite number of available IRQ's. For instance; If serial ports are not used by any device IRQs 3 and 4 become available. If a machine does not have a floppy drive IRQ 6 will be freed. I don't use floppy drives so I allways disable floppy support. If you use a USB printer than disabling the par.port will free IRQ 7 or 5. If you don't have any USB devices than completely disable usb support. On newer boards several USB root hubs can be found. Disabling this will allow for less sharing of IRQ 10 and/or 9.
#3. The MS OEM manual in many locations states that using a clean drive to preform a clean install results in a more stable system. After preforming the initial install, upgrading or installing in place clearing off the drive is prudent. Naturally Wipe is not my first choice since it will not go beyond the first 8 GB. I use lots of IBM drives so the link to the IBM site for Wipe was the first one that I could think of. Since the bootable partition would fall smack in that location that Wipe does it's work than that would be sufficient. Normally I would zero fill the entire drive using the DFT from IBM or the DFT from Maxtor (Drive Fitness Test). The primary function would be to overwrite the MBR. Another utility that is area specific is called ZAP. Using MSes FDISK and the other MS utilities will get the job done yet Partition Magic is the main choice of techs.
#4. Will he loose all of his data? You bet your bottom button he will! Sure he would need to back up anything relevant. To get the machine running correctly would be better than stringing corrupted files and the existing Windows Rot along. A clean install will take a short period of time and prove to the user where the issues lie. He will actually set his/her own machine up and learn how to get the job done.
#5. BIOS settings in general:
Change as little in the BIOS as possible is one of the first things a tech tells a customer. After all the BIOS is the first actual computer prog that runs in a PC. Award, etc. write code in assembly that regarding T.R. is third party. Without the BIOS you would have a box of parts. The OS can not set the BIOS so this is left to the admin/user/tech. Setting voltages and clock speeds for the proc. and setting SDRAM timing sould not be taken too lightly yet most other settings regarding PnP and cards and drives should be set to properly accomidate these devices. Auto is a great setting since it takes a lot of guessing out of it. Reccomending default is OK when no cards are in the machine yet as stated before some boards have onboard perfs.
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Time you wrote a novel and yet said nothing! Think of it this way the poster could have reposted if he had a issue or problem regarding any question or advice he had been given during this thread. You want folks to E mail you. That is something that could be risky. Giving out your E mail address can lead to probs. Yelling at people is something that I would do. For instance if someone attained info from your E mail by using a packet sniffer then ran a prog. like Pass Quack against your machine that could have sharing enabled he/she could find out info about you that extends their knowledge of you too far. Someone could get to your money, ss#, data and find out where you live.
Imagine if someone found out where you lived?
They could break into your house and clean it out. If they hated something about you, you could get a beating or worse. I don't have anything to hide yet I am not here to build relationships with strangers. One point that you made is that someone could yell at you for messing up their machine. First if they are comming to this cyber place for help, God help them and their PCs are likely messed up so getting them working correctly is a challenge. Computers that I work on are within the scope of what I manage to deal with daily. To give free help, something that you feel that they should build you a statue for doing, is something that I do when I'm board don't feel like playing Quake. Statues are nice but I don't belive that S__T can be stacked that high. What you have to offer based on the past couple of threads is nothing but persicution of me.
I offered you a truce then you kept it going. I asked in the nicest way that you not refer to me with the "Prince" comment, yet you did regardless. I asked that we ignore each other and you posted twice. Shame on you Time!
When I said that I had no time, I had to go out with my wife. So I had no time to address you. I have some time now though.
Bad advice is not what I gave. If you would not do what I would that is your loss.
I noticed that you write quite well. I wish that writing and spelling were my stronger abilities. One thing that I do very well is build and repair systems. I learned the most during the time when my parents bought me a computer years ago. Over time computers become less and less adjustable and less mystical. Put the CD in the CDROM and click on the button that says yes. Modular systems with PnP. Shove it in a slot and it works. All of the thinking has been done by the engineers so you don't have to. Remember when every card had jumpers to set the IRQ. Well now everything wants IRQ 9 to 11. If you ar using Win2K everything gets IRQ9. XP will really take the guess work out.
Do I bad mouth MS?? YES. MS throws crap all over us at every turn. Are they the only game in town? YES! Because as the judge ruled,"MS is a MONOPOLY!!!" Well this is what we have and what we get for letting MS show us the way. Time stop and read your posts and consider how pissed you are. I really get to you! The reason that I get to you is that you are insecure. Reply to the post with your advice and leave me out of it!
In the future I think that I will start E mailing you personally so I don't have to rip a hole in the side of your neck in this place.
Time "Pontification" Rider, you suck!

I really, really, really think you need to calm down son. I could almost see spittle coming out of my monitor.

You are taking this far too personally. If having someone disagree with your opinons causes this degree of rage in you, perhaps you should see someone. If you'll post your city of origin, I would be happy to direct you to some anger management counselors. My day job allows me access to these types of contacts.

In the meantime, I'll just say a prayer for you.

Take care and be safe . . .

-TimeRider

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Hi there ... I'd just like to add my two cents worth. I build the new systems at work that go out to our clients for their networks. A couple of weeks ago it seemed like every one I built would boot up with that same registry error. What I ended up having to do was disable the fast shutdown. These were all PIII 800mhz machines and they were shutting down before windows was finished writing to the registry and that is what was causing the errors. Once I disabled the fast shutdown I didn't see another error ... and I have built over 20 systems in the past 2 weeks. All clear! Hope this helps some. Take care all ...

You know this is funny I have got absolutely the same problem as TIMBERWOLF.

My Hardware:
windows 98SE - celeron 433 - 64MB RAM - 15 GB MAXTOR HD - GeForce2MX 32MB - Elitegroup P6BAT-A+ Mainbord with VIA chipset - Ehthernetcard - TVCard

I have 64MB PC100 SDRAM on my system plugged into the 1st of the 3 slots. And now I wanted to install another card with 64MB PC100 SDRAM into the 2nd slot. So I did that I simply plugged it in an turned the computer back on (hope this is all I have to do to install new RAM). From that moment on I often got this errormessage:
"Windows has encountered a problem accessing your registry. Click ok and windows will restart and correct the error for you."
Additionally is to say that it looks like, that this errormessage only occured when the registry had been modified (for example after installation of new programs). I got the errormessage when I restarted the computer or under windows when I ran "scanregw".
So I assume that either the new RAM has defects or it is not installed properly. Has anyone of you any idea what I should do ? Could it somehow be a problem that my celeron runs with 66MHz and the SDRAM supports 100 MHz?

MindsEye posted that such problem could be solved by disabling "fast shutdown". O.K. but how do I do this BIOS or WINDOWS.

Please please help me !!!

Rob