Off-topic: Registry problems, IE4.01, and multi-system partitioned disks...

[Debbie Figus <debbief -at- NETVISION -dot- NET -dot- IL>]

I'm posting this for a friend. Please send all responses to her at:
<yechiel -at- compassware -dot- co -dot- il>  Thanks.

====================================================================
Hi,
I am sorry to bother you all with something that is off topic, but I
have a registry problem that no-one seems to know how to solve... and it
is really making my computer non-functioning! I thought that maybe a
Techwhirler somewhere might have come across a similar problem...

My computer has 3 internal hard drives: 6.4 gb,  2 gb, and 800 mb.
My main hard drive is 6.4 Gigabytes. This I divided with System
Commander Deluxe into 4 partitions, which were hidden from one another.
Into each partition, I placed a different Windows 95 language system.
Everything was fine and worked beautifully for  a month.

I then received a freelance job, writing a manual in html. The company
gave me their beta CD to install on my machine. I thought that I was
safe installing it into one partition, at least it couldn't affect the
other partitions! Little did I know... The beta CD uses the IE4.01
engine to run their program. The CD also installed IE4.01 on my machine.
Previously, I only used Netscape.

>From the beginning I had problems with the CD and had to keep
uninstalling and then reinstalling the program. It was the only way I
was able to carry on documenting...

Eventually, it got to the point that IE4.01 as a browser no longer
worked on my machine. Their technical staff could not help me out with
this problem. They tried, but were unsuccessful. They suggested that I
downloaded the latest IE4.01 from Microsoft, which I did.

Meanwhile, I continued having registry problems. Never having suffered
from this problem before, I did not realize its significance. I
mentioned it to their technical staff, but they again were unable to
help! Every couple of days I got a message that there was a registry
problem and I had to restart the machine.

Unfortunately after 2 months carrying on this way, the registry problem
got so bad that the system no longer worked!

Solutions I have tried:

  1. I replaced the System.dat and User.dat with the System.daO and
     User.daO. No change in the computer's status.
  2. I ran Scandisk several times on the whole disk. No problems
     found.
  3. I reinstalled Windows 95 over my old Windows 95. After 10
     attempts of this with 2 different Windows language systems, I
     realized that this was not drastic enough.
  4. I reformatted my 6.4 Gig. hard disk, recreated the partitions
     and only put 2 languages on the whole disk. So far so good... But
     in the middle of the 2nd language installation, I started receiving
     the registry problem message again.
  5. I reformatted that partition  and reinstalled the system. The
     systems were fine. Now, when I started reinstalling my programs,
     immediately on completing installation I got the registry problem
     message.
  6. I wrote to V-Com who make System Commander and just got an auto
     reply response.
  7. I sent my computer off to the technician hoping he would find an
     easy cure... He sent it back after a day, insisting that everything
     is fine... This morning I sat down to reinstall my programs and
     after installing Office 97 Professional I got a... registry
     problem!
  8. The technician seems to be blaming the programs that I am
     installing for causing the registry problems. But my husband
     installs these same programs on his machine without having any
     registry problems.
  9. Is the next response to throw out the computer and start again?
     Only this time avoid IE4.01?!!

Seriously, I would really like to start using my machine again. Does
anyone have any advice as to where the problem could be hiding? I
suspect the boot sectors but would have thought Scandisk would catch
boot errors?

Many thanks in advance,
Tybi Kapiloff
yechiel -at- compassware -dot- co -dot- il


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=