Windows Registry (XP)
 

Following an unsolveable BSOD I have reinstalled a new copy of XP but would like to be able to peek into the 'failed' registry to try and see what went wrong.

Is there any way I can look at a registry (eg with RegEdit) that is not actually in use without risking life and limb with my new installation?

For info, having tried ALL rescue attepts, I repair/installed the crashed XP but am stuck with a 'setup cannot run in safemode' message when I run it.

Hey Boac

Did you format the disk when you reinstalled XP?

Theoretically you could, but unless you're a long-time major NT hacker I doubt whether you'd find the cause of your problems.

The Registry is a huge binary tangled mat of interdependencies and utterly obscure values, only one of which needs to go Tango Uniform for your system to go off to la-la land. Five files in the system32\config folder - Default, SAM, Security, Software and System.

Registry backups (and I commend ERUNT - http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
- to you) are only one answer to the problems of a stuffed XP. I've just had to reinstall my son's XP Pro (boring-boring) because of a corrupted kernel driver that I couldn't track down. Still, I suppose that it had been up for 3 years, which is exceptional for a Windows install.

Linux is easier since there isn't a registry, just hundreds of text configuration files scattered around like confetti. If you can figure out where it barfed you can at least get at it and have a chance of fixing it. Still, Linux has it's own problems too.

Good luck :ok:

Thanks guys - Zoink - no, just yet another 'install/repair' - the previous had all been successful.

Mac - I am interested to hear of your reinstall - another mod has also had an 'unexplained' XP crash - and I also suspect a corrupted kernel, as the original was crashing on the start of the second MS splash. Is there 'something new' out there?

Whilst poking around in a few of the logs from around the suspected crash time is see entries like this

A®žÿõDIRTÿ

Just a coincidence there? - and no, before you all ask - I haven't.................:)

"Is there 'something new' out there?"

Maybe, but it's probably just happenstance.

The one terminally irritating thing about Windows is that it's so hard to track down things like a corrupted kernel driver on boot. Bootlog.txt is huge and figuring out what's wrong isn't easy. And to fix things you really need to pull the disk and put it in a working XP environment (Knoppix writes are a bit dodgy).

"Well, well, well. SSC calculations, huh. I built a system out of 2 inches of wire, 3 pennies and a AA battery that does realtime calculations of particle vectors during the Big Bang. A complete simulation of the first 2 years of the life of the universe, accurate to the theoretical limit, takes about 5 seconds".

PS: Yes, I know about Bart's PE as a way of accessing a disk.