HELP! - Cant boot pc

[Jim82]

First of all, happy new year and sorry if this is the wrong section.


Im using my sisters pc at the mo

After compacting the registry using 'Registry Mechanic' my machine wont boot. I rebooted when prompted to finish the compactiong process - It runs through the loading logo screen but at the point it flicks onto desktop it just stays black, no error messages atall.

I cant get it to run in safe mode either, just sticks - no error messages.


help badly needed thanks allot

[foxyshadis]

If you can system restore, that should save you. Otherwise you may be SOL and in line for a reinstall. That's why a number of people don't trust registry cleaners/compactors at all.

If you have access to knoppix or another bootable OS, you can run a logged startup and find out where it's failing, but you would still probably have to reinstall to fix it.

[setarip_old]

Hi!

Does your sister have an emergency boot disk?

[Video Dude]

The good news is that the data is still on the drive. If you still can't get the drive to boot, you can take the drive out, set it to slave and put the drive in your computer. Then copy all the important files over to another drive and back them up.

[Jim82]

well, fiddled around with the recovery console for ages to no avail. Eventually had to admit defeat and re-install windows.

The fact I didnt have to format the hard drive was a consillation although re-installing everything is a pain in the ar$e to say the least!!!

So if reg mechanic is one to be avoided, what good alternatives should one go for with regards to registry maintenance?

cheers me-harties smile.gif

[Video Dude]

what good alternatives should one go for with regards to registry maintenance?Do nothing. Don't even think about. Let Windows take care of it.

[Doobie]

Where's the backup registry? Not only does Windows keep a backup, I'm sure that Registry Mechanic also makes a backup.

[MACC]

For me I do not like these cleaners. Another good idea is if you have to use this sort of thing its a good idea to back up the registry first. However if you can't boot the system if something goes wrong it may be difficult to restore the registry.

So I agree with Video Dude

[foxyshadis]

System restore = registry backup. (Plus some profile files.)

Otherwise, certain utilities can perform a registry backup, including the built-in ntbackup utility. Or just copy all the files out of X:\WINDOWS\system32\config and ntuser.dat from your profile, while booted into another OS.

[Jim82]

intresting advice. Im leaning towards using the method of ignoring any registry proggs and leaving it allone.

The only thing making me think though - If I ran reg mechanic once a week It would always get 20-50 entries, most of which coming from a deep scan. Would these not build up if no proggs used? will this not slow things atall?

video dude- your advice has always sorted me right out, could you do me a favour and tell me what software you use for maintanence and everything else? like video editing, spyware removal etc - would be great buddy.

ANYONE ELSE WANNA JOIN IN, GO AHEAD AND POST YOUR SPECS!

My main components:-
amd 64 3700+ san diego
ASROCK Dual SATA 2 Mobo
1GB GEIL Value Dual Channel Mem
74GB Raptor SATA 10,000rpm
160GB Maxtor 7200rpm IDE

Software I use religiously:-

Maintenence-
Adaware SE Personal (newest) edition
AVG Free
Spybot 1.4
Diskeeper Proffesional

Video-
Virtualdubmod for pre-editing
Virtualdub for analogue capture
TMPGenc for quality encoding(away to give cce 2.7 a try)
NeroVision for Things Im not gonna keep (eg tv episodes, mp4 etc)
DVDdecrypter - excellent, nuff said
DVDlab for proper authoring
TMPGenc dvd author for when im in a hurry
DVDshrink (away to try DVDrebuilder inc CCE as per recommendations)

[CWR03]

Having a cluttered registry doesn't make that big an impact on Windows loading. The best way to keep top speed is to uninstall any unused programs, and any you don't use frequently can be prevented from loading using MSConfig.

[dani82]

i'm using TuneUp Utilities to clean up my registry (among other thing), it's a great program, been using the demo for over 2 years

[mod]

Crap Cleaner is easy and doesn't even consider to delete anything that may be important.. There're a lot of "better" (=more dangerous :) ) progs of course.

[Nematocyst]

Don't use tweaks. It's one thing to go into the registry to remove some annoying feature. But it's another to trust some 3rd party tool to "optimize" your registry or network settings.

You'll get as much speedup as is possible by disabling certain unneeded services and removing startup programs that vendors install for no apparent reason.

In my case, indexing services are the most evil. I have little use for them since I know where all my files are to begin with. And they have this annoying habbit of overloading the disk subsystem every so often. And you can't see it in task manager since the CPU remains idle the whole time.

But you have to decide if the prospect of (IMO unnoticable) speedup is worth borking your perfectly good system.

[Jim82]

Well that pretty much settles it for me then. I'd always thaught of the registry as something that ought be left allone except for the odd verified tweak I seen in afterdawn, so yes, surely it must be a bit dosgy reliying on 3rd party progs to "optimize" , removing 10-50 entries in minutes, does seem risky.

this has been an enlighting thread, thanks allot for the discussion everyone:)