[Billfreeman]

I was cleaning up some HKEYS and inadvertently deleted some wrong ones. Couple of questions 1) How do I reinstall/fix WINXP SP2 (or do I need to remove SP1/SP2) and reinstall WINXP from CD then reinstall SP2? What's the best option. 2) I also deleted some MSN (ISP provider) keys. I tried to go in control panel and do ADD/REMOVE on MSN but it says not enough memory (which I know I have) or it's busy doing something else. How can I remove MSN?? I tried downloading it off the MSN.com page, but it won't let me install as what's on my machine is newer than the download. Anyone know how to remove the MSN off the system so I can reinstall it?? Again, what's the best option on that one.

Lastly, I have on my Dell an 80gig HD, and an external 80 gig HD......what are people using/doing for backups out there now? I'd like to backup the whole system on C:\ to the F drive (my external HD)....for future events as described above or crashes. Suggestions??

thanks!!

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have you tried system restore?

[dsenette]

have you tried system restore?

[Billfreeman]

no I sure haven't, I ran out of time last night....was 1230 getting frustrated and had to wake up at 330 am.

This all started becuase on the cold boot (startup when sys is off) or restart, the desktop etc would load and at a certain point Windows Installer was trying to update earthlink (which I haven't had in over 2 years)...you can click cancel (about 5-6 times then it goes away. I've looked in the startup, msconfig, etc etc...and couldn't fine earthlink or Total Access (earthlink software at all)....I have three things going at once. I'll try the restore and see how that goes and will let you know...should that fix the MSN as well? What about the Windows installer? I just now downloaded HIJACKTHIS to try that as well...
I will have to say in my error...the system is loading quicker....

[dsenette]

try the restore it should fix whatever things you broke...then we can try to fix whatever problem you were having before you broke it more..hehe

[Billfreeman]

Good morning,

I tried the restore on numerous points and no luck, said it could not restore. SO, I went into add/remove SP2 (since I have the original CD of WINDOWSXP)....after a reboot, I get a desktop screen with the background I had before but no icons or START or anything except (on lower right corner of screen) says it's running SP1. What do I need to do from this point to just CLEAN INSTALL windows XP (my data is already saved on an external drive. This way I can "eliminate that other error as well of the Windows installer trying to load earthlink update. To recap, right now I have removed SP2 with the intent of removing SP1 (but when it rebooted after removing SP2 it comes up with the desktop screen and the background I had on there, but no icons, start or anything, you can move the mouse around, if you do a ctrl-alt-del you can get to the task manager and thats it. Path forward on clean boot from this point?????

thanks

[dsenette]

if you wanna start completely over....put the xp disk in and make sure that your bios is set to boot from cd (get into the bios usually with del or f2 on bootup)...once you enter setup choose to setup windows (not repair) delete the current partition (should be the only one listed...if there are two..and one of them is really small...like..5 megabytes or something like that then leave that one there..) now it will ask you to setup windows on that partition...do that...and do the FULL FORMAT not quick format...and format as NTFS (you could do fat32..but ntfs is more efficient)...after the format it should restart and then continue on with the windows install..you'll of course have to download all windows updates and you may need to get some drivers if everything doesn't detect on install

[Billfreeman]

at this point, I think that's the best thing to do, plus start fresh again, get rid of old crap etc....will let you know...thanks!!