The inevitable

If you try to use a computer without knowing what your doing, chances are, one day you'll talk to me (well, only if you work in a dental office or work with dental offices).

That's just the way it is -- take it or leave it.

Hard drive experiment

FYI -- different hard drive manufacturers don't always have interchangeable parts.

I took the platters out of a Western Digital IDE drive, then I took the platters out of an IBM SCSI drive and put them in the WD. After I screwed everything back together, I realized that I probably voided the warranty because the seals were broken (Oh well, the drives were pretty old, so I doubt there was any warranty left). By the way, I didn't do this in a clean room or wear any gloves, either.

Anyway, I put it back together (sort of) and powered it up. Guess what? ...

It didn't work. The drive made a high-pitched beeping noise. The good news is that it didn't explode, causing the plates to fly out and injury my fellow coworkers -- thank goodness.

I'm not sure if if the hard drives worked before I started doing this, but they sure don't work now. Maybe I'll try it again with two other drives that I know work. If there's one thing about working on computers I've learned, it's this: don't give up easily.

Partitions and Me

Okay... So I have a Windows98 box. I put another hardrive in it and installed XP, so I can switch between booting in Windows 98 and Windows XP. That's all find and dandy you might say? Well, not since during the install of XP and inadvertently deleted the partition on the Windows 98 drive. I did not format it though, good thing.

After searching for hours, I found an open source program from cgsecurity.org that allowed me to recover the partition and all data contained thereon. It was a lifesaver. I highly recommend this product -- mostly because it's free, but also because it did the job. I'm sure that now that I've endorsed this product (of which I can't remember the name right now), hordes of people are going to start downloading it so they can delete partitions and recover the data. AFter all, I have so much influence in the technology industry (That was irony, friends).

The way I look at technology is if you're armed with the aptitude, and/or the proper tools, feel free to break things because you can fix them.

Registry Rights

Have you ever wondered what would happen if...? (It seems like everytime I have a thought like that, I spend a long time trying to get my computer to work again. I wonder why?)

Anyway, I was wondering what would happen if you took away all your rights to the registry.
Would Windows even let you. Let's say, hypothetically, you right clicked on the HKLM and chose Permissions, could you uncheck Full Control for Administrators and have it work?

If anybody has any thoughts on that, I'd like to hear it; otherwise I just might try it.

Software Key Deletion -- How to recover

I'm not going to go over every step, so that you don't get tempted to try to delete the Software key. I don't want you to think, "Hey, I can delete it because this guy's going to show me how to recover."

Just so you know, there will probably be a few small things that won't work quite right, but they are very minor things. The recovery is based upon Window's Restore points (I think); so if there are none, I don't know if you could recover the registry (or at least very easily). That being said, I'll continue.

In the System Volume Information folder on the root of the hard drive are snapshots, which I would describe as restore points (but I don't know if they actually are). In order to access those directories, you will have to slave the hard drive in another computer. Then you can copy over the five registry hives to the WINDOWS\System32\Config (after renaming the existing ones, of course) on that slaved drive.

Then put the drive back in it's computer and boot up. There you go. Now don't say I never taught you anything. Of course, maybe I didn't, since these steps come courtesy of someone I work with, Gubi; so I suppose he taught you, albeit indirectly. So, the only thing I've ever taught you was that it is not so bright of an idea to delete the Software key, even after exporting it.

If you try to delete the Software key in the Windows Registry, here are a few tips:

1- Don't do it.

2- Don't do it.

3- If you ignored tips 1 & 2, then proceed to tip 4.

4- Don't do it.

5- Persistent aren't you? Proceed to step 6.

6- After deleting the Software key, the computer will appear to be functioning, until you try to open My Computer -- it will be blank. Then most programs will cease to function, and the computer will freeze.

7- Don't think that exporting the Software key before deleting it will work. If you try to restore it right after deleting it, you'll get a message about files being in use, and it will fail.

8- The only thing you can do is reboot, possibly even a hard reboot. However, Windows will never fully load and the computer will be caught in a continual reboot loop.

*** Tune in next time for information on how to recover from a corrupt registry.

In the beginning...

Regentristry was born on the first floor of the DENTRIX Dental Systems, Inc. building. The regentristry symbolizes the harmony between man and computer; yet, only one will survive.