Emergency Repair Disk

[pmistry 0]

Under NT4 and 2000 you could create a rescue disk and backup the registry can I still do this in XP? I checked Administrative Tools and Backup and couldn't find it.

[thymios 0]

XP has a hell of a lot better tool for that, which is active by default and it's called system restore.It takes snapshots of your system's registry and critical info when it's healthy and you can roll back anytime to a previous "healthy" state by restoring it.You can actually make a snapshot by yourself.mun system restore from Accessories-->System Tools and find out more for yourself.

 

If you are already aware of that feature, and just need to backup the registry on a disk, then to tell you the truth i never tried it on XP and i don't know if there is such a function.

[pmistry 0]

I am sure I could back up the system.dat, user.dat, and ntuser.dat files to a disk or a place on the hard disk. I know of system restore, but sometimes when you just can't boot into Windows [even safe mode], you can repair an installation by booting the CD and selecting the fact you have a repair disk.

[OLEerror 0]

If you can't boot normally or into Safe mode, you can boot to Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Log on using an account with administrative rights. Run %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe.

 

Unfortunately, you cannot run System Restore from the Recovery Console.

[thymios 0]

system restore also works when you press F8 during boot and choose "last known good configuration".Then it will give you a list of available dates.

[pmistry 0]

thanks for the tip

[scared 0]

Hi,

Unfortunately system restore doesn’t help if your windows\system32\config\system file gets corrupt. You have an unbootable system. (I've just experienced it)!

 

It suggests booting to recovery console and copying a "good one" from windows\repair.

 

I did this and had an unbootable PC - login information incorrect (ie system login didn't work so couldn’t start services etc and I could no longer use recovery console as admin login didn't work, password always incorrect). Had to copy the whole of repair and lost all logins and hence all encrypted files - had to install win2k to do this (sigh).

 

My advice is to run a backup pick "system state" from my computer - kill it if you don't want the backup but it updates the repair folder. It also creates 2 files for an auto recovery disk but need to find more info on this.

 

When I finally got a working system all my recovery points were gone. ie a waste of space had to live with what I had.

 

I'm scared !!!

 

ps Hope this makes sense