CSS, the registry, SP2, and access IBM recovery

[gtphill]

Hey everyone,

I have been having major issues with my x40 recently (see the x40 forum). Now windows is not letting me add or delete programs that are installed?!?! Does CSS have any say over the registry?

This happened after windows installed ie7, as I was not looking closely enough at the installations it was attempting.

Finally, as it seems I will (again!) have to do a cold recovery from the rescue partition, I have a couple of quick questions:

1. Will the restore to factory wipe out other partitions on my hard drive? How do I retain other existing partitions?

2. My x40 is old enough the RnR space stores SP1 XP, where do I go to update to SP2 now, given that MS is only supporting SP2 now.

Thanks everyone!

[christopher_wolf]

You probably installed PC Doctor 5 as well, as that has been known to wipe the Add/Remove Programs CPL of certain functionality. It isn't CSS nor IE7 (although it could be IE7 in combination with PCD5) that are the primary culprits.

Do you have an RnR or System Restore backup you could go back to? If you have a restore point, you have to go back and restore it through safe mode. Should you do that, there is no reason to do a full re-image of the system. There are ways you can use the RnR disk set to selectively write over just one partition, though.

[gtphill]

You probably installed PC Doctor 5 as well, as that has been known to wipe the Add/Remove Programs CPL of certain functionality. It isn't CSS nor IE7 (although it could be IE7 in combination with PCD5) that are the primary culprits.

Do you have an RnR or System Restore backup you could go back to? If you have a restore point, you have to go back and restore it through safe mode. Should you do that, there is no reason to do a full re-image of the system. There are ways you can use the RnR disk set to selectively write over just one partition, though.

Jackpot Christopher, thank you! I must be friggin PC Doctor 5. Is there a patch for that?

I never use system restore, and I have no RnR I can read, as they were encrypted, and CSS screwed up in the course of fixing my box. Thankfully I had the important data files unencrypted on a portable HDD, and my work desktop.

I just ran RnR from the rescue partition, and despite the scary text on the main screen, it sees my other partitions, and gave me the option to reformat C: only. Great!

Thanks again!

[christopher_wolf]

Glad it worked for you, Phil.

Yes, there is a way to fix it if you don't have backups, but it is rather involved. You can either regenerate the entries by installing one of the programs again, looking at the new registry entry it created, then take that and replicate the key points for the other missing entries, or you can just reinstall the programs that the A/RP CPL doesn't have the tab info on. If you really can't uninstall from there, you can download a utility like CCleaner and it will provide an uninstall/reinstall list functionality until you can get Add/Remove Programs working again.


So far as I have looked into it, all it does is wipe the references in the registry for the Add/Remove Programs CPL and not much else; some programs, like Adobe Photoshop can actually misbehave after this (license problem, usually.) because they use further references for their uninstaller resources. Although, in all cases, reinstalling the program will fix it....but it is rather tedious.

PS: Good luck on your PhD

[gtphill]

Glad it worked for you, Phil.

Yes, there is a way to fix it if you don't have backups, but it is rather involved. You can either regenerate the entries by installing one of the programs again, looking at the new registry entry it created, then take that and replicate the key points for the other missing entries, or you can just reinstall the programs that the A/RP CPL doesn't have the tab info on. If you really can't uninstall from there, you can download a utility like CCleaner and it will provide an uninstall/reinstall list functionality until you can get Add/Remove Programs working again.

I ended up just doing another windows install. Thanks to this forum I had predownloaded SP2 updgrade, and most of the big patches, so it went pretty fast. I need to learn how to write windows scripts to configure TweakUI and my other personal preferences.

I'm not really a computer guy, though (materials engineering), so I just sort of fake it. building desktops back in the day helps some.

PS: Good luck on your PhD

Thank you, I really need it. Graduate school has not been pleasant!