My dad tonight rang me asking for help with his PC after my mum let my 10yr old nephew turn off the PC after using it earlier in the day. She has no pc knowledge whatsoever so couldnt tell me how he switched it off but he has now got the following problem:- He switched the power supply on at the plug as usual expecting to then turn on the tower, but on this occasion the tower automatically booted up without the the need to. The usual windows me screen appears and then the screen goes to a grey background and he gets a message saying 'new hardware found'. (Now i know my nephew is good with lego but hes not quite an expert at fitting new hardware!) A message then comes up recommending at automatic search. One other thing that appears is the mouse cursor but this cannot be moved. After searching it says that it was unable to locate the software for the device (what device it is looking for the software for, i dont know). After clicking on next he gets a small box appear whith the following: in the blue top it reads: Enum\HTREE\ROOT\O (could be more on the end of this?) and underneath this: SURegCreatekey failed (cursor over 'k' so could be something else) If ok is then pressed it just goes back to the grey screen and nothing happens. Ive tried starting in safemode but still no success, ive done the scandisk ok upon booting which found no errors and just did the same thing. Help would be appreciated as my dads interest in PC's has only comeabout over the last 12 months and now he cant get enough. Hope ive given enough info cos im not very good at this sort of this. hope to hear from someone soon Cheers
How to Manually Restore the Windows 98/Me Registry http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=221512 Press and hold down the "Control" key during bootup until the Boot Menu appears, then select "5. Command prompt only". At the DOS prompt type "scanreg /restore" (Note the space) (You may need to type "cd c:\windows\command" if you get "bad command") Scan through the list and see if there's a date available when all was working correctly. If yes, restore that one, reboot.
|>The usual windows me screen appears and then the screen goes to a grey |>background and he gets a message saying 'new hardware found'. (Now i know my |>nephew is good with lego but hes not quite an expert at fitting new |>hardware!) A message then comes up recommending at automatic search. One |>other thing that appears is the mouse cursor but this cannot be moved. After |>searching it says that it was unable to locate the software for the device |>(what device it is looking for the software for, i dont know). After |>clicking on next he gets a small box appear whith the following: |>in the blue top it reads: Enum\HTREE\ROOT\O (could be more on the end of |>this?) |>and underneath this: SURegCreatekey failed (cursor over 'k' |>so could be something else) This sounds just like your problem: http://tinyurl.com/5pnql with fix. (appears to be ME)
If all else fails, you can load Windows ME again from the original Microsoft CD. In Window ME, if you load without formatting the hard drive and without deleting the old Windows folder, it essentially refreshed many of the Windows files. This often fixes a problem. This technique is designed so you will not have to reload any programs. IF you were to delete the Windows folder, you would have to reload 100% of the programs. IF you format the hard drive, you will have to reload 100% of the programs AND you will loose all the data on the drive. This includes documents, spreadsheets, pictures, music, etc. EVERYTHING. Most technicians will use the "format the hard drive" technique because it is more likely to solve a given problem. It also takes less knowledge to run, just follow the same easy steps on every machine. The down side is that the user looses everything. The up side is that it is more likely to fix the problem so you can call the job "done." There are other answers, but this one is the easiest to understand.
