>>Besides that, WinXP has backups of previuos registry settings - so if it is fouled up - one can roll it back to a previously good version.<<
Robert -
Right, except in my case it didn't work. (Have you tried it, by the way?) No matter how far back I went in the list of backups, I would get the same message. The message said only that Windows could not restore the registry from that backup, and suggested that I try another one. There was no indication of what the root problem might be.
BTW, the reason my registry got screwed up in the first place is because I was foolish enough to use a great new XP feature, the File and Settings Transfer Wizard. It was supposed to finally make the process of moving from one computer to another less painful. The fix for the bug that caused my problem was released a few weeks later.
Unfortunately, I didn't find out how screwed up things were until I was trying to manually uninstall Norton Systemworks, because LiveUpdate wasn't working and the regular uninstall process wouldn't work.
Symantec's instructions for clearing up the problem involved deleting all the Symantec entries in the registry. I discovered that I couldn't delete them. I'd get errors, once again the very helpful kind, that said "error deleting key [whatever]".
Only after much research did I discover the File and Setting Transfer bug. Even though I had removed the Norton stuff from my Win2K machine prior to using the wizard, it still copied the Norton registry entries, which of course hadn't been properly removed by the uninstall process.
Does any of this seem like something one should have to go through with an operating system?
And I still haven't gotten a response from any of you Windows zealots about why you think an OS that forces you to reinstall applications after an OS reinstall makes sense.
- Allen |
