-=PCTechTalk=- Re: explosive expletive behaviour
- From: Gman <gman.pctt@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 20:11:04 -0400
Don,
As far as I could tell, it appeared that the problem was within the
partitioning info stored at the very beginning of the drive. The issue
picked on the second volume twice, rendering it useless until formatted
again. Rather than wait for a third instance (and another round of wasted
time setting up all of my apps, settings, preferences, etc.), I just
figuered I'd take care of ALL of the problems and cleaned it out proper.
The 1st, 3rd and 4th volumes were simply victims of circumstance since
there's no way to do a low level format without destroying them, too. Plus,
it gives me a perfect opportunity to try out some of my nLite, RyanVM, WMI,
etc. experiments in a real world setting with little to lose.
:O)
As for OS's rule settings, I wrote a tutorial many, many moons ago on
how to do what you're suggesting. Unfortunately, I was running Win2000 Pro
the last time I had saved them. I know better than to try and mix registry
entries from two different operating systems. When you use the trick of
exporting your settings and then find you need to redo OE (like after a
format), remember that each instance of OE uses a random string such as
{2E449F6D-D8EE-4283-A695-90B38A39DB97} as its identifier. Before Importing
your saved reg file into your new installation, you have to go into the reg
files and change each and every one of those references to whatever the new
identifier string is in the new install. If you don't, those rules and
settings will never be applied to the instance of OE that's now on the
system.
I prefer to Export the following key (all one line):
My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\
{2E449F6D-D8EE-4283-A695-90B38A39DB97}\
Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express
If you take a look at that area of the registry, you'll see subkeys for
your Rules, Signatures, settings, etc.. In older MS OS's, it also would
contain all of your email account settings, but that's no longer the case.
In XP, those can be found at the following key. Note that there is no
identifier string to worry about in this key address.
My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Account Manager
The best weapon against what happened here would have been complete
Images of the drive(s) in question. I would have been able to do my low
level format, repartition the beast, restore the images and been right back
where I was before the issue reared its ugly head. Apps like True Image can
do that, but it's not the same as what you're suggesting. A drive image
would contain everything, including the registry. A backup doesn't do that,
unless you instruct it to back up the various files that make us the
registry. With multiple registry files in multiple places in a given OS
install all relying on each other for compatability (a single program
install can spread its entries across several of these files), it can get
really messy if you accidentally combine last year's USER file with this
year's SYSTEM file. If you just want a backup of the registry, use a
utility that can save the whole thing as a single easy to Import file and
store that off of the drive.
Peace,
Gman
"The only dumb questions are the ones we fail to ask"
----- Original Message -----
From: "Don101" <don101@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 8:22 AM
Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: explosive expletive behaviour
> The extended pleasures I had in mind had nothing to with hard drives.
> :-))
>
> What in the world would cause a hard drive to go bad like that? I could
> understand a partition becoming corrupted but not all 4. Unless maybe the
> boot manager was corrupted. But couldn't that be repaired without wiping
> the entire drive?
>
> Outlook Express records all it's email/news rules in the registry (I
> didn't
> know that for sure until last night). I would have tried putting the
> drive
> into a good machine (as a slave) and gone digging around trying to find
> all
> those rules.
>
> If a person uses a good quality back-up program such as Acronis True Image
> and has it make incremental backups between full backups will the
> incremental include any changes to the registry? If so that would save
> some
> typing. I only have about 2 dozen rules but still hate recreating them
> (which is why I went looking for them to begin with). If I export the
> rules
> key and put it somewhere safe then I should be able to delete the key on a
> clean install and import the saved key. Right?
>
> A bouquet of roses and a bottle of wine (and a bottle of a "performance
> enhancing drug") will fix the attitude problem with the "little lady".
> :-))
>
> Don
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