Screwed up my 2k install, (Burke) you there? =)

Epyon · Post by **Epyon** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 8:02 pm

I was fooling around with regional settings, and ended up setting it to Japanese. It seemed to be going fine at first, time changed to military but then it pretty much froze up. I could Ctrl + Alt + Del, but when I'd click to open task manager it would do nothing. Then tried to force a log off, which it would take about 5 minutes to close 1 program and an end task prompt.

Eventually it just totally froze up, so I had to manually power down. Turned the pc back on, everything seems to be fine. I log in but it haults at loading user settings screen. The moving spash bar does not freeze, but it will not continue, have waited over 10 minutes with no result, no HD activity.

I feel like I'm pretty much screwed now.. I booted into an old install of WIN ME, running @ 640x480 - 16 colors.

Is there any possible way for me to fix this by manually opening a file and editing it so that the locale is back to united states, or do you recommend something else?

Thanks in advance,

(Maybe you can help Burke!)

Prey521 · Post by **Prey521** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 8:08 pm

I'd boot from the 2K CD, run the recovery console and use the chkdsk /r command @ the prompt....it saved my ass the other day from some corrupted Win2K system files.

Epyon · Post by **Epyon** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 10:12 pm

Alright, just spent the last 2 hours doing that, to no avail.

Same thing as before..

If you're out of fixes, could you please goto your win2k system32 folder, and look for the file named "$WINNT$", and tell me what is in the field, or better yet, post everything in your [regionalsettings] field.

Thanks in advance

Sid · Post by **Sid** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 10:46 pm

If you have not been able to log back in since you made the changes try "last know good configuration". If you logged in after you made those changes this will not work.

Norm · Post by **Norm** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 10:57 pm

If you mean what's in the $winnt$.inf file

[regionalsettings]
Language = "00000409"
LanguageGroup = "1"

Epyon · Post by **Epyon** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 11:18 pm

Tried last known good settings, no dice.

Thanks norm, but it seems that your information mirrors mine.

I'm sort of stumped here, but there must be a way...

I mean, it boots fine up until it tries to load the user settings right after logon(then it haults there, but not a full freeze, the colored bar keeps scrolling to show me system isn't in a full timeout).. I'm 99.9% sure the regional settings are user dependant. If I could log-on as a different admin.. I don't have another admin accnt though, I just have the main default admin account, and I have the guest account disabled for security.

The good thing as you could probably tell is that I have FAT32 for both filesystems, so I could technically hack a new account into my win2k install, or modify any of it's files.

mnosteele52 · Post by **mnosteele52** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 8:01 am

Can you boot into safe mode ok?

You can always repair 2K, just boot to your 2K cd and choose the repair option.

Epyon · Post by **Epyon** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 6:37 pm

No dice, just did a repair. It replaced all the OS files, but didn't touch my user settings for Admin..wtf?

This must be a user profile/regional profile setting for my Administrator default account. Which has in turn corrupted it..

Is there any way to set my user profile for Administrator account back to default? Or overwrite it with a similar copy. (Another profile file for Win2k Administrator with all english settings).

Or at least replace the file that stores the regional settings with a fresh USA locale one.. Just brainstorming a bit

Norm · Post by **Norm** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 7:12 pm

mnosteele52 wrote:Can you boot into safe mode ok?

Wondering this myself.

The file you need to "hack" or edit is the registry.
http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBA/tip0300/rh0311.htm

You 'may' be able to edit the registry using regedit commands from the commandline boot option "safe mode commandline". I'm not very familiar with the 2K boot options, or if regedit commands work from that mode, so don't take my word on it.

If you can boot to safe mode you can edit the registry with ease.

Epyon · Post by **Epyon** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 7:56 pm

Safemode and VGA mode both load, but it haults at the stage I listed before.

I'll check that link though

Sid · Post by **Sid** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 8:57 pm

You can run regedit through "safe mode with command prompt" See if you can boot into it and run regedit

Brk · Post by **Brk** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 10:27 pm

rofl

Why would you put my name in there? I'm an OS moron...

Sid · Post by **Sid** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 10:40 pm

Burke wrote:rofl

Why would you put my name in there? I'm an OS moron...

Cause you can baffle them with BS

Epyon · Post by **Epyon** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 10:49 pm

Burke: Haha, I thought you knew Win2k. My mistake..

I seem to have found a work-a-round..

Wasn't what I exactly expected, but it works..

I renamed my account name "Administrator" folder to "Admin",

Found out, it will make a new user profile named "Administrator" in it's place, but it's basically an empty shell. From there, logged into Administrator and lo and behold, it actually got past "Loading user settings".

From there, I copied my original files from Admin into Administrator. Which consisted of "My Documents, Cookies, Favorites, Desktop, and Start Menu".

(Note, the copying from the two Admin folders was done outside of 2k(Winme), as to not cause a possible sharing violation).

I have to reinstall all the patches though, and update IE but this works.

Thanks for your help everyone

Sid · Post by **Sid** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 11:03 pm

Epyon wrote:Burke: Haha, I thought you knew Win2k. My mistake..

I seem to have found a work-a-round..

Wasn't what I exactly expected, but it works..

I renamed my account name "Administrator" folder to "Admin",

Found out, it will make a new user profile named "Administrator" in it's place, but it's basically an empty shell. From there, logged into Administrator and lo and behold, it actually got past "Loading user settings".

From there, I copied my original files from Admin into Administrator. Which consisted of "My Documents, Cookies, Favorites, Desktop, and Start Menu".

(Note, the copying from the two Admin folders was done outside of 2k(Winme), as to not cause a possible sharing violation).

I have to reinstall all the patches though, and update IE but this works.

Thanks for your help everyone

Where the Hell did you find that? I'm gonna load up virtual pc and give it a shot. You just renamed the "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator" to "C:\Documents and Settings\Admin" ? Then rebooted and it created a new administrator account?!?!? I've never seen anything like that documented. So basically you can rebuild the admin profile. That goes against anything MS say's. How cool!

Epyon · Post by **Epyon** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 11:50 pm

It wasn't documented, but I found an article that said something like "If your user settings/account is missing or deleted, it will make a new temporary temporary account". From there I got a brain storm, but rather then delete my old account, just renamed it so it regenerated a new account, was named "Administrator" hence that's what my username was.

Everything's going fine so far, so it seems to be a working fix.

Epyon · Post by **Epyon** » Sun Aug 29, 2004 12:00 am

Sid wrote:Where the Hell did you find that? I'm gonna load up virtual pc and give it a shot. You just renamed the "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator" to "C:\Documents and Settings\Admin" ? Then rebooted and it created a new administrator account?!?!? I've never seen anything like that documented. So basically you can rebuild the admin profile. That goes against anything MS say's. How cool!

Yeah that's correct, it would create a new user profile/account that was named whatever your login was. I'm not sure if it's just limited to Administrator though.

Edit: Oops, sorry for double post.

SG Broadband Community

Screwed up my 2k install, (Burke) you there? =)

Screwed up my 2k install, (Burke) you there? =)

eek