External drive

catdog02895

I have a computer which is blue screening with error 0x00000051. The error occurs at the welcome screen and so I cannot boot into windows to run RegCleaner. I would like to scan and fix the registry on the hard drive with it installed as an external drive. Is this possible?

Thanks

Norm

jv16

I'm afraid that is not possible, you can only access the registry of the currently running Windows.

catdog02895

It seems to be possible in the version of RegCleaner(it is version 4.3) that comes with the build of Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows that I am using. However, it does not seem to fix errors properly, but it does access the registry from the computer that is running Ultimate Boot Disk and even allows a choice to view the registry from any of the accounts on that computer.

jv16

catdog02895 wrote
It seems to be possible in the version of RegCleaner(it is version 4.3) that comes with the build of Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows that I am using. However, it does not seem to fix errors properly, but it does access the registry from the computer that is running Ultimate Boot Disk and even allows a choice to view the registry from any of the accounts on that computer.

I don't quite understand. RegCleaner, a program I made in my youth, does not have such feature. If you use some boot disk system to boot from the external drive in a way the Windows installation stored there is started, then you can access its registry with any registry utility, including RegCleaner or jv16 PowerTools.

But neither can access a registry other than the one currently in use.

catdog02895

I just checked the version that is available with Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows. It is "RegCleaner version 4.3 by Jouni Vuorio". I assume that the jv in jv16 PowerTools 2009 is Jouni Vuorio. It looks like it actually does load the registry when RegCleaner is started but it only works as a viewer of the registry, any actions (such as removing programs from the install list or fixing registry errors) hang RegCleaner. However, using RegCleaner I have identified the offending account since it allows the user to chose which account to start. As soon as I chose the offending account the computer crashes (even when the computer is running Ultimate Boot Disk). Is it possible to permanently remove an account from the computer without actually booting with that drive?

tullik

catdog02895 wrote
. . . Is it possible to permanently remove an account from the computer without actually booting with that drive?

If you can see the drive (say x:\), you could try moving (deleting burns your bridges) the suspect userid subfolder found in this folder:

Vista - x:\Users\...

XP - x:\Documents and Settings\...

If you can then boot from the drive in the standard way, you may be able to find and "correct" registry keys owned by the suspect userid with a procedure something like this: http://www.macecraft.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=18488#p18488

I stress "in the standard way". Apparently (from your description), "Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows" is fiddling with the registry images to be presented before calling an obsolete and completely unsupported program ("RegCleaner version 4.3 by Jouni Vuorio").

catdog02895

That did it. Moving the whole folder of the offending account. Thank you!