The story is that I was trying to optimize my PC. My registry was... wow... thick with useless crap. So I downloaded HijackThis and Crap Cleaner in addition to AdAware, and I already had SpyBot. I figured what the heck, let's clean this thing out. So I did.
BUT... I must have axed something in the registry. I can't imagine what exactly I did, honestly, but now Windows does not think it's genuine anymore.
I've robbed this silly, overpriced operating system of its identity. It thinks it's a pirated, [bleep] child. Well it's not! The [bleep] thing came on the computer!
Now what should I do?
I have some backups of my registry. Should I just go back to the old one? Or can you guys perhaps tell me how to fix it another way?
Argh.... Please, honestly... These things can be so frustrating.
Will you assist me? *humble bow*
PS I somehow managed to screw up my copy of PerfectDisk as well. I can't get it to come up on screen anymore, although it still loads its services into memory upon startup. I hope I didn't do anything else in addition! Jeez...
PPS I tried Windows Restore, and it doesn't work. It gives me an error about some other system component blocking it from working. Seriously. This is getting absurd.
Update: Apparently this is worse than I thought. I'm trying to use the tools at http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/ to fix the problem, but they lock up FireFox. Use IE instead, I of course thought. Well, IE is nowhere to be found on my hard drive. Apparently I wiped it out somehow. And I can't reinstall it because it's "part" of Vista. So reinstall Vista? Well, I have no Vista CD. It came on my PC, and my PC came with no CDs. I found a DVD I made. It says "backup" on it. I'll try that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wanted to reformat my entire computer. This would not please me.
I can't remember being so upset or frustrated in recent memory. I really hate Microsoft and Vista right now. I really wish someone would rescue me.
Yet another update: I rebooted to check out the backup DVD (which will erase the hard drive and set everything to factory default--could be handy sometime). Once I figured out what it did, I canceled so I could see what I'd need to backup and make a list of things I'd have to download and/or reinstall. Well, when I rebooted, the message was gone. Not only that but Perfect Disk now runs normally. I have no idea why things work again now. I don't know whether to be happy or irritated, but I'm not about ready to go kick the neighbor's baby or cry on my bed anymore at least.
Edited by Jesse Dylan, 23 May 2008 - 10:00 AM.
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