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From: dlevy on 5 Jun 2010 16:57
Hi all,

I'm hoping some experts are on the discussion group here because I am
getting close to a dead end. I am trying to help a friend restore his
Windows XP installation. It's a real doozie. He has a very expensive CAD
program on it and wants to avoid at all costs wiping the hard drive clean and
losing the program -- for which he has no installation software... (I know,
that was a dumb thing to lose the installation software, but it's been my
experience that it's all too common among the non-geek population...)

--This is a Dell laptop, but there is no recovery partition on the hard
drive, as far as I can tell. My friend said the OS was re-installed on it a
while back by a non-Dell technician. The disk info says 'volume created
3/25/09', so that sounds like it's what happened. It's a Dell Inspiron 6400
laptop, running Windows XP Pro, Spanish language version, purchased in
Argentina.
--The computer will not boot normally, nor to safe mode. In either mode, it
generates two pop-ups, both of which say: "The application failed to
initialize properly (0xc0000006). Click on OK to terminate the application"
(the equivalent of that, in Spanish). After clicking 'okay', the Windows
desktop appears but there are no icons or taskbar. The only thing I can do
is pull up the task manager, which shows about a dozen processes running.
Needless to say, explorer.exe is not one of them...
--I ran a short Dell diagnostics program before the BIOS POST. It threw up
a "DST Short Status Test fail, error code 1000-0146" (DST=drive self test).
But I think that's a red herring. I've read that the msg only means that the
log files shows an event.
--I ran CHKDSK using my own copy of the Win XP installation CD. It found an
error on the first check, then found no errors on the next two checks. So,
as far as I can tell, the hard drive is not failing.

I have looked over this article
"How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from
starting"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

This seems like the direction I want to head in. But my questions are:

--Given the symptoms, would it make sense that the problem might be a
corrupted Windows registry?
--The MS support article says off-handedly, "This registry [that you are
restoring] was created and saved during the initial setup of Windows XP.
Therefore any changes and settings that occurred after the Setup program was
finished are lost." Well, that's a BIG problem. The whole point is to save
my friend's CAD program. If I am rolling back the system to the day it came
off the factory floor, then I might as well re-install the OS. Is there a
way to just roll back the system to a restore point, say a month or two ago?

Thanks in advance to thoughtful and well-informed replies.

Sincerely,

David Levy
Washington, DC
From: John John - MVP on 6 Jun 2010 07:33
dlevy wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm hoping some experts are on the discussion group here because I am
> getting close to a dead end. I am trying to help a friend restore his
> Windows XP installation. It's a real doozie. He has a very expensive CAD
> program on it and wants to avoid at all costs wiping the hard drive clean and
> losing the program -- for which he has no installation software... (I know,
> that was a dumb thing to lose the installation software, but it's been my
> experience that it's all too common among the non-geek population...)
>
> --This is a Dell laptop, but there is no recovery partition on the hard
> drive, as far as I can tell. My friend said the OS was re-installed on it a
> while back by a non-Dell technician. The disk info says 'volume created
> 3/25/09', so that sounds like it's what happened. It's a Dell Inspiron 6400
> laptop, running Windows XP Pro, Spanish language version, purchased in
> Argentina.
> --The computer will not boot normally, nor to safe mode. In either mode, it
> generates two pop-ups, both of which say: "The application failed to
> initialize properly (0xc0000006). Click on OK to terminate the application"
> (the equivalent of that, in Spanish). After clicking 'okay', the Windows
> desktop appears but there are no icons or taskbar. The only thing I can do
> is pull up the task manager, which shows about a dozen processes running.
> Needless to say, explorer.exe is not one of them...
> --I ran a short Dell diagnostics program before the BIOS POST. It threw up
> a "DST Short Status Test fail, error code 1000-0146" (DST=drive self test).
> But I think that's a red herring. I've read that the msg only means that the
> log files shows an event.
> --I ran CHKDSK using my own copy of the Win XP installation CD. It found an
> error on the first check, then found no errors on the next two checks. So,
> as far as I can tell, the hard drive is not failing.
>
> I have looked over this article
> "How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from
> starting"
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
>
> This seems like the direction I want to head in. But my questions are:
>
> --Given the symptoms, would it make sense that the problem might be a
> corrupted Windows registry?
> --The MS support article says off-handedly, "This registry [that you are
> restoring] was created and saved during the initial setup of Windows XP.
> Therefore any changes and settings that occurred after the Setup program was
> finished are lost." Well, that's a BIG problem. The whole point is to save
> my friend's CAD program. If I am rolling back the system to the day it came
> off the factory floor, then I might as well re-install the OS. Is there a
> way to just roll back the system to a restore point, say a month or two ago?
>
> Thanks in advance to thoughtful and well-informed replies.

In the Task Manager click on File -> New Task (Run...) and from there
you can try to launch programs or commands, try to launch Explorer.exe
from there and see what happens. From the same location you can launch
the Event Viewer (Eventvwr.msc) and see if there is anything useful in
the System Log.

John
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