[ccrunner]

Hi,

I have a Hewlett Packard Vectra desktop pc
Pentium 3, 930 Mhz, 128MB ram
Windows XP home edition upgrade


This is a very strange problem, it may have to do with my registry.
After running a registry scan and fixing errors, I noticed that all
my software programs that display any kind of html, such as
Outlook Express, my html editor, my keyword research tool, and
my webpage design software, will no longer display, but instead,
a windows screen pops up prompting me to either open the file
in my browser or save it, thus, rendering my software programs
useless. I have no idea how to fix this and I don't have the technical
knowledge for this type of problem. If need be, I will reformat
the hard drive and just start over, but would rather fix the problem.
I scanned the registry twice (mistake), so I don't think I can go back to the way it was.

Any ideas? Thanks.

ccrunner

[stantley]

If the registry cleaner has a way of restoring backups, try that.

If not, try a Windows System Restore to a point prior to running the registry cleaner.

[Elvandil]

There are no safe "registry scans". They are do a greater or lesser degree of harm. You no doubt have many more errors that you have not yet found.

Follow stantley's advice and roll back the changes. Those "errors" found by the cleaner are only errors to the company that made the program. They are not errors. It's a scam. There is no scanner that can decide safely what should stay in the registry (which is by far the majority of what is in there now).

http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=643
http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-...gcure-any.html
http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-...y-cleaner.html
http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-...g-cleaner.html
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vi...file-lost.html

[aka Brett]

I had the same thing happen one time when i was on the site Tagged me and her were trading messages pretty fast.
we both ended up with the same problem.
I tried everything...it cleared up on its own 2 days later..so did hers.

[ccrunner]

The most recent registry backup won't help me unfortunately. My XP is an upgrade, so I think I will have to get a full version OS to do a system restore. There are no backup points saved on my computer since that option was apparently not enabled. Lesson learned.

[stantley]

Which registry cleaner did you use?

[ccrunner]

Eusing Free Registry Cleaner. It has a function to restore the previous registry, but unfortunately, I cleaned it twice before realizing my computer was having problems, so the previous registry would also be corrupted.

[stantley]

Do you have any .reg files in C:\Program Files\Eusing Free Registry Cleaner\Backup?

[ccrunner]

I have 10 files in that folder starting from last July to the current month. Is there a way to select one of those?

[stantley]

Double-click on the most recent .reg backup file, that will put those entries back into the registry. Then check to see if that fixes the problems you're experiencing.

If not, double-click on the next most recent file and keep working backwards until the problem is fixed.

[ccrunner]

I double clicked each file working backwards, but the problem is still there. I also removed a program that was installed during the same time frame, but no change. It could be a virus. I don't have anti-virus software, so maybe I will try AVG. I have the full edition of XP being shipped to me, so if all else fails, I will use that to do a repair install. I also have a spare hard drive to do a new install on.