Major headache (long)

I've been getting nasty blue screen crashes for awhile now, so I'm
guessing I need some new hardware; probably the mamaboard. [I say this
because my mouse is also acting funky. It stops and starts, jumping
backwards, executing random button clicks and drags, and just
generally acting annoying. I cleaned it, that's not the problem. It's
a regular ps/2 mouse.]

However, money has been tight for awhile so I've been living with it.
Unfortunately, last night it crashed particularly badly and almost
nothing works anymore.


I can't bring up Outlook or IE. I can't open any folders, I can't
open Control Panel. They all crash. I can still run cmd though, and
my ancient Windows Commander still works too so I can transfer files
from my Win2000 machine if I need to. It only goes in one direction
though - it would seem that whatever service it uses on XP isn't
running so I can only pull files, not push them (ie. I can run WC on
XP and copy files from Win2000. My Win2000 machine can't find XP on
the LAN.)


I tried reinstalling (upgrade, not fresh install) and for the most
part it seemed to go pretty well, however near the end it tried to
install a bunch of dll files which it claimed it couldn't find.

After retrying many times, I finally told it to just continue without
the file. It missed easily a dozen files with the same problem. One
would think it was a bad CD, but read on...

So, I tried using expand to copy all of the i386/ dll files to my
system32/ directory and that seemed to work just fine. However, it
doesn't appear to have any effect in terms of fixing my original
problem. I also ran chkdsk. I ran SFC /scannow. I ran CCleaner.

I ran ad-aware which found some tracking cookies which I deleted. I
tried to run spyblaster but it needs an upgrade,
and the upgrade/update won't download as it seems to depend on IE,
which crashes.

Since nothing appeared to work and I need to get this fixed, I broke
down and bought a new hard drive. I did a fresh XP Pro (SP2) install
on it and booted it. There were no errors so I guess my CD is ok.
Mouse is still screwy and I suspect the ps/2 mouse port has gone bad -
so I bought a USB mouse and plan to try that soon. Programs are no
longer crashing though which was my biggest problem.

So, all in all I'm essentially on top. However, certain issues
remain.

I"m now running a new hard drive as you know, and by mucking with the
BIOS I'm able to boot it as drive H: I didn't
know that was possible, yet here I am. And, my old not working so
well installation is still known as C:


I like that. It means, in theory - that I don't have to reinstall
the
whole world, as the registry will still know where to find stuff - it
hasn't moved. However, I'm reluctant to just experiment without
someone holding my hand. I had planned to do the following.


Copy my Desktop folder from C:\Documents and Settings\Dudely\Desktop
to H:\same path

I'm assuming, I'll then have my usual desktop restored, allowing me to
go about my usual business.

Then I realized, my new version of XP doesn't have the registry
settings, so I still have to re-install everything, right? Any
simple
way around that? I know if I was confident that I had a good hive on
the old drive I could probably just copy it over... but, I'm not so I
probably shouldn't. Worse, the newly installed programs may start
referencing as H:, so I'm not sure if that will mess me up or not. My
biggest fear is I'll end up with scewy mail files - I'm sure by now I
have over 1500 messages waiting for me, about 200 of which are
probably important.

Any ideas on that?


Last problem in this saga... when I reinstalled XP, I goofed when I
created the user Dudely, and I put a single quote in as I hit Enter
(fat fingeritis). So my user is now Dudely' See the quote? I've
tried a variety of methods of getting rid of it, but I can't. I tried
renaming the User, Deleting the user, renaming the directory, adding a
new user then deleting the old one, etc. Nothing works. Do I have to
reinstall this thing yet again in order to fix the user?


Thanks in advance!

Disable automatic restart on system failure. This should help by
allowing time to write down the STOP code properly. Right click on
the My Computer icon on the Desktop and select Properties, Advanced,
Start-Up and Recovery, System Failure and uncheck box before
Automatically Restart.

Do not re-enable automatic restart on system failure until you have
resolved the problem. Check for variants of the Stop Error message.

Look in the system log of Event Viewer and post copies of the most
recent Error Reports.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer.

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dudely wrote:
I've been getting nasty blue screen crashes for awhile now, so I'm
guessing I need some new hardware; probably the mamaboard. [I say this
because my mouse is also acting funky. It stops and starts, jumping
backwards, executing random button clicks and drags, and just
generally acting annoying. I cleaned it, that's not the problem. It's
a regular ps/2 mouse.]

However, money has been tight for awhile so I've been living with it.
Unfortunately, last night it crashed particularly badly and almost
nothing works anymore.


I can't bring up Outlook or IE. I can't open any folders, I can't
open Control Panel. They all crash. I can still run cmd though, and
my ancient Windows Commander still works too so I can transfer files
from my Win2000 machine if I need to. It only goes in one direction
though - it would seem that whatever service it uses on XP isn't
running so I can only pull files, not push them (ie. I can run WC on
XP and copy files from Win2000. My Win2000 machine can't find XP on
the LAN.)


I tried reinstalling (upgrade, not fresh install) and for the most
part it seemed to go pretty well, however near the end it tried to
install a bunch of dll files which it claimed it couldn't find.

After retrying many times, I finally told it to just continue without
the file. It missed easily a dozen files with the same problem. One
would think it was a bad CD, but read on...

So, I tried using expand to copy all of the i386/ dll files to my
system32/ directory and that seemed to work just fine. However, it
doesn't appear to have any effect in terms of fixing my original
problem. I also ran chkdsk. I ran SFC /scannow. I ran CCleaner.

I ran ad-aware which found some tracking cookies which I deleted. I
tried to run spyblaster but it needs an upgrade,
and the upgrade/update won't download as it seems to depend on IE,
which crashes.

Since nothing appeared to work and I need to get this fixed, I broke
down and bought a new hard drive. I did a fresh XP Pro (SP2) install
on it and booted it. There were no errors so I guess my CD is ok.
Mouse is still screwy and I suspect the ps/2 mouse port has gone bad -
so I bought a USB mouse and plan to try that soon. Programs are no
longer crashing though which was my biggest problem.

So, all in all I'm essentially on top. However, certain issues
remain.

I"m now running a new hard drive as you know, and by mucking with the
BIOS I'm able to boot it as drive H: I didn't
know that was possible, yet here I am. And, my old not working so
well installation is still known as C:


I like that. It means, in theory - that I don't have to reinstall
the
whole world, as the registry will still know where to find stuff - it
hasn't moved. However, I'm reluctant to just experiment without
someone holding my hand. I had planned to do the following.


Copy my Desktop folder from C:\Documents and Settings\Dudely\Desktop
to H:\same path

I'm assuming, I'll then have my usual desktop restored, allowing me to
go about my usual business.

Then I realized, my new version of XP doesn't have the registry
settings, so I still have to re-install everything, right? Any
simple
way around that? I know if I was confident that I had a good hive on
the old drive I could probably just copy it over... but, I'm not so I
probably shouldn't. Worse, the newly installed programs may start
referencing as H:, so I'm not sure if that will mess me up or not. My
biggest fear is I'll end up with scewy mail files - I'm sure by now I
have over 1500 messages waiting for me, about 200 of which are
probably important.

Any ideas on that?


Last problem in this saga... when I reinstalled XP, I goofed when I
created the user Dudely, and I put a single quote in as I hit Enter
(fat fingeritis). So my user is now Dudely' See the quote? I've
tried a variety of methods of getting rid of it, but I can't. I tried
renaming the User, Deleting the user, renaming the directory, adding a
new user then deleting the old one, etc. Nothing works. Do I have to
reinstall this thing yet again in order to fix the user?


Thanks in advance!