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Deleted item from Registry

I deleted something in the Registry and now when I try to restart Win2000 I get an error at the boot menu after pressing Win2000 that says "Winntsystem32configSYSTEM." I tried using the boot disks that I created after installing W2k but to no avail. It still comes up with that error. Will I lose everything if I re-run setup from the CD as I know that I can do it with Win98/ME without losing anything. I did leave it as a FAT32 when I installed it two weeks ago.

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Since the partition is FAT32, you could boot to a network boot floppy and copy your files to another machine. This would be a good idea just as a backup.

The problem appears to be a corruption in the SYSTEM hive. Have you tried the Last Known Good Configuration? Press F8 at the boot menu and try it.

You can do a reinstall of the operating system without losing data. I recommend installing into a separate partition if one is available. You could also remove the hard drive and put it in another machine to copy off the data then wipe the drive and re-install.

This was first published in May 2001

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