Lost Installation Disks

[Shakespear]

Hi

I am new here and must say that your forum is highly recommended by people on the Net.

I have a legal Windows 2000 Professional OS on a DELL Latitude 610. After messing around one too many times I allowed some maleware etc cleaning software to delete "suspicious" registries and other things.

The software did supposedly make a backup of everything that was deleted so technically I should be able to recover this if I run it again. Also, luckily that same day I did do a registry backup while doing something using regedit.

The bad part is that I can not get into the laptop even in Safe Mode. On top of this, as I have been traveling a lot of the years I have lost the installation disks for this laptop and the one I am now writing this. I know, I am with my pants down

What are my options to get back into this laptop? I have been reading a bit on this on the Net but thought I would try people on this forum due to your deep experience.

Thanks

[EzyStvy]

There's a 50/50 chance Dell will send you a cd for free or $10.00.

[Shakespear]

Hi Cowboy

I used to live in Dallas. Nice weather and good barbecue. Near SMU, party neighborhood !!!

Well I am now in Poland and anything done here is SLOW !!!

How would I try to get these disks? Email Dell or do you think calling them would be better?

Now that I am in this mess I have taken down all relevent info off of my currently working DELL and do have the service tag for the other plus see the WINDOWS OS sticker on the back of the laptop.

[glc]

Any Dell reinstallation CD will work on any Dell without the need for a license key. You will need to download all the drivers and reinstall all your software.

[Shakespear]

Hi glc

Thanks for the info. It is more than I got from the Polish DELL representative, "It is too old, we have nothing".

I just found this place

http://ubcd4win.com/downloads.htm

I think this would be my savior as I need to get into that laptop and UNDO the wonderful things that I did

If I understand it correctly, this software will run on the CD and give me an OS to at least work on the hard disk and the software there.

If it works it will be a nice day and I will be more careful and better prepared for this

By the way, my laptop apparently is rather old (one 2001 the other 2004) by DELL standards and that is why the guy from DELL said they could not help me with a CD.

[glc]

If you nose around, I bet you could "borrow" some kind of Dell reinstallation CD - it's not legal per the EULA but a XP reinstallation CD *will* work..........

You will need a real XP CD to build a UBCD4WIN. A Dell CD won't do it.

If you have data on the laptop that you must recover, your best bet is to pull the drive and use a USB adapter to connect it to a working computer.

[Shakespear]

You will need a real XP CD to build a UBCD4WIN. A Dell CD won't do it. If you have data on the laptop that you must recover, your best bet is to pull the drive and use a USB adapter to connect it to a working computer

I'm with you on this.

In my NET hunting I found this site which allowed me to make BOOTUP disks for Free!!!

http://www.allbootdisks.com/2000.html

I just managed to get into the laptop and am in the c:\WINNT directory and ...

am "Where I have Never gone Before"

Question.
What can I fix from here that is related to the registries?
Can I run some command that would allow me to load the backup registries data that I saved just before this fiasco ?

Thanks in advance

[glc]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

This is for XP, but 2K should be the same except for the location of the system directory. 2K uses \WINNT and XP uses \WINDOWS.

[Shakespear]

Thank You VERY much for all the help

This place is Really good.

PS: My laptop was bought in Switzerland and on the US Dell website they keep referring me to their web page there (I enter my service tag). The only problem is I do not speak French or German. Thus this forum has been of most help with my issue.

Now I am beginning to better appreciate why people complain so much about Microsoft.

[Shakespear]

At the moment I do not have Win2K CD's and can not boot the laptop into SAFE MODE. Just blue screen with KMODE_EXCEPTPION_NOT_HANDLED - win32k.sys error message. I looked at MS knowledge base and I do not have a virus as they mentioned for the above noted error message. Well I did not find DL.EXE anywhere.

I am able to get into the laptop using a NTFS READER for DOS bootup disk I found on the NET. Using this I was able to find the backup REG file I created using regedit for all my registries on the laptop. My question is,

What can I do next without needing to use the Recovery Counsel which I do not have access to at the moment?

Should I wait till I have the Win2K disk?

I read that it is not good to recover using the backup file I made using regedit while in Windows. If not, then how do you do it?

Thanks in advance for any help

[glc]

Threads merged - please don't start new threads on this issue as it loses continuity. Thanks!

- Admin -