Need advice from gurus

[Genenut 8]

I dont know if anyone here is enough of an expert but I thought I'd toss this problem out there and see what comes back

 

My son the "techno -ohno wizard" has I believe corrupted his registry. specifically the keyboard and mouse drivers *sigh*. We do not have original install disks its a frankenstien'd system that was a gift from my sister and her husband (both tech geeks).

 

The problem is because the registry is corrupt and the drivers are screwed up the system while it will boot, doesnt "see" the keyboard or mouse after bios. So while we have a back up norton ghost partition, I cant get to it to restore things.

 

the system is windows 2000 professional? so it doesnt have a dos core. I tried booting (via f8) to command prompt only but it hung. (5 min no hard drive activity, only a splash screen with a pop up stating windows starting). We can boot to safe mode but again with no keyboard or mouse.

 

Will a boot disk ( I found images online so I think I make one from my xp system at home using the image files) pull from the boot disk or from the registry for the keyboard and mouse? I can make do without the mouse, but I need the system to not ref the hd for the keyboard or it wont work.

 

If a boot disk wont do it, can I pull a hard drive with win98se on it use that as the boot drive and then manually restore the back up on the hdthat belongs to the system and then remove 98se hd or will I run into problems that the 98se hd is for a diff system and as such the drivers wont work so it wont boot? the 98se hd is OEM so I'm not sure what I have for a disk. I dont think its a 98 disk, but a restore disk of a sort with other garbage on it.

 

Any help would be appreciated

[Yarasa 0]

try to find usb keyboard and mouse for ghost recovery. Maybe one of your neighbors borrow it for you short period of time.

another option is the boot with the ghost recovery disk.

[Schot 407]

Oh wow. That's a tough one... Have you had a look through the bios Dawn? Maybe USB is disabled? For that matter can you see if anything else USB related is working or not? Try other USB sockets maybe. Grasping at straws here, haha. Oh and have you tried unplugging and the plugging keyboard or mouse while in windows? To see if it will auto detect new hardware?

[myles 2]

Install window again should work, if it comes to that.

 

But try Usb first. Usb mouse alone should be enough. Should you need typing, use the "on-screen keyboard".

 

If you can't even recover on the basic level, then a manual registry edit (from network or thru another PC) would be the last resort I think.

[Zinsho 0]

Accessing the PC from another machine might be difficult depending how they're set up. Remote Desktops aren't enabled by default from what I remember seeing here at work so accessing the machine and then fiddling with the registry could be tricky.

 

If you can get your hands on any 2000 CD you might be able to perform a "Repair", depending what's gone wrong that could fix things. Actually it might even work with an XP CD, I remember seeing an option at one point about repairing an older version of the OS.

 

The only other choice I can think of would be obtaining something akin to "MiniPE" or "ERD Commander" and using that to boot (They're stripped down versions of windows essentially that allows you to boot the machine and get to your drives without any of the files being locked out as "in/use" or "system only".

 

Of course, depending what exactly was done to the registry and or the drivers... it might not get you much farther.

 

 

Actually re-reading quickly. If you have a backup of the hard drive... couldn't you pull the 2000 drive out, mount it to a second IDE/SATA (depending which it is) slot on another Machine and perform the backup from there? If you can I'd suggest doing it on an XP machine simply because it's backwards compatible and you don't have to worry about the off chance that 98 will dislike something.

[Genenut 8]

alas the ghost recovery disk isnt a boot disk apparently. it kept telling me command.com wasnt on it. :-( from what I remember of my BIL instructions the disk just allows the computer to "see" the d drive with the ghost image of the c drive for restoration purposes (to work like windows xp and fowards recovery feature) .

 

I tried (plugged in prior to start up) a usb keyboard, actually just to check if the ps2 port wasnt working, and it did the same thing, function during bios and then non functioning as soon as windows starts up. And the system is password protected (techno wizard has his own log in at lower security settings to try and prevent some of this from happening, but he found a way around it) so since I dont have a keyboard I cant get into windows at all. I'm stopped at the log in screen.

 

We dont have original disks to reinstall windows on this system.

 

I may have to try plugging in a usb keyboard at the log in screen and see if that will jump start things... but I dont think so. the corruption was caused by installing drivers that shouldnt have been installed.

 

thats why I need a boot disk maybe/hopefully to by pass whats on the drive so I can reinstall from the ghost partition..

Edited September 8, 2008 by Genenut

[Genenut 8]

this person is having the same problem (I'mnot a member so I cant see the solution)

 

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/D...Q_21191219.html