Whinge

So I thought I’d do a chkdsk on my Windows disc, make sure all is well.

It wasn’t. So chkdsk fixed whatever was wrong.
And left a machine incapable of working. Whatever software I start begins, then immediately dies. The command console worked, but I couldn’t run SFC because of some gibberish to do with RPC not running. Eventvwr said it was. Hmmm.

So I’m running the XP Setup Repair option. Hope this fixes things without cocking up too much…
…but I’m not entirely convinced seeing as it looks as if it is just going to go ahead and reinstall Windows on top of the current installation…

So I’m running the XP Setup Repair option. Hope this fixes things without cocking up too much…
…but I’m not entirely convinced seeing as it looks as if it is just going to go ahead and reinstall Windows on top of the current installation…

Yes, pretty much so.
The main thing that gets trashed is the registry entries for installed software.

Get your install disks ready for a repair/re-install.

You know the bit where the info suggests you do a recovery disk, guess what it stores (yup, registry bits)
What the info doesn’t suggest is making a recovery dis after each additional install session, but it should.

I guessed that it was the registry – the system came back more or less as I’d left it (actually I’m impressed!) but some random things were screwy, like the monitor setup had vanished (but luckily the auto detect found and installed the cached drivers), the system language had reverted to Thai while it had kept my UK / French / JP IME language settings.

I’ve run OvationPro, Notepad++, and Firefox. Everything started okay. I’m less sure about the video grabber as it would require drivers. Oh hell, hang on, let me plug it in… Loading lots of drivers. Done. Running the TVR app. Yup, blank screen (expected, no video input) and crackling in the audio if I poke a paperclip in the audio socket and jack up the system volume. It appears to be working as expected for a video grabber with no input. ;-)
Final test, can VLC autoplay the L’Internat DVD?
Yup.

Well, that’s the important stuff dealt with. ;-) All seems to be okay.
(Phew!)

The registry after each install – isn’t that what all that system checkpoint stuff is for? Not that it would help with chkdsk trashing random bits of the registry in the guise of “fixing” it, might you, if said breakage killed Windows applications being able to even start.

I wish chkdsk had an interactive mode, where you could see it about to mess around in user.dat (or whatever the registry file is, I forget) to give you time to think “holy crap, let me go back that up before you muck around with it”!

Still, system appears to be running okay now. I would say “wow startup is slow”, but I wouldn’t reliably know, I usually hibernate it because it takes so long to boot. ;-)

The registry isn’t just one file, it’s a collection of several that they call a ‘hive’.