help! Windows Registry Error...

[enhancedstudios]

one of my friends is having a problem and came to me for help... i'm not sure what the problem could be... hopefully somebody here does. here's what he told me:

"I have tried installing winxp, windows2000, and win98 on my computer... and none of them will work... the only one that even will install fully is win98, but then i keep getting windows registry errors once the computer boots up... xp and 2k won't even fully install without the registry errors... i've tried fully reformatting the hard drive and installing from scratch, and still nothing works... any idea what the problem could be and how to fix it?"

thanks for any help

[ReSpAwN DeMoN]

hmm......... maybe there is some kind of problem in the mbr. Could it be? Maybe just maybe its bringing the problems back? Try deleting the partition then recreating it and formatting and loading windows. This way not even the FBI can see anything.

[Wiggo]

Ok this sometimes happens when a Windows NT os leaves behind a compressed folder. The only way to get rid of it is to Fdisk the drive and delete any Non-logical partitions. Now sometimes the later DOS versions may not do this so go to http://www.bootdisk.com/ and download a DOS 5 boot disk as this is guaranteed to work. ;)
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Birdkiller]

Try deleting the partition then recreating it and formatting and loading windows. This way not even the FBI can see anything.

well maybe not the FBI, but any agency with technology can still read it, it is possible to read what was written 5 formats ago. thats why the DOD standards on formatting include 9 runs of writing all 0's and all 1's

as for the registry problem, if win98 has a registry prob on boot up every time then you got faulty ram.

[Kheldar]

whats the hardware

some older PC's won't take any modern OS

it could also be a specialised pc ie compaq, etc. some of these types of pc's can only run the OS that came with it (the exact OS CD, even the same version won't work)

[drpeterbright]

Birdkiller 13 times is even better than 9.

[Birdkiller]

yeah 13 is better but US DoD 5220-22.M standards only specify 9 is needed.

[drpeterbright]

That's why we call them flub-a-dubs.

[Birdkiller]

who? what? :confused:

[orionwa]

You need to tell what motherboard and CPU this guy has. Since Win98 is the oldest of the ones you have tried, I would think that your friend has a CPU that the OS doesn't support or maybe the motherboard doesn't have some epected feature.

I doubt you have SCSI system, but if you do, you should low-level format the hard drive using the installed SCSI controller, otherwise there can be problems. I have heard that if you take a drive from an ultrawide system and hook it up to a U160 system there can be problems till you redo the low level format.