Alright, I've got a terrible computer problem at the moment. Let's start from the top... I'm using Windows ME. No, I don't have the money right now to upgrade to XP, and no, I do not want to lose everything on my computer. It's got everything in my life on it from my junior year of high school, and that was 5 years ago. So, I refuse to format the hard drive. I'll buy a new one and start over before I do that.
I was browsing around the internet, and actually tried to load automags.org Well, my broswer completely froze, and wouldn't do anything. So, I axed it and restarted another browser. It would load my home page(which, btw, is set to http://www.vanderbilt.edu no, I'm not advertising my school) Now, if I clicked on any link on my home page, or tried to put in another internet site, it would freeze.
Alright, so I figured it was just a generic problem. My computer regularly gives me those. So, I tried to restart. It froze when it was trying to shut down. alt+ctrl+del didn't help, nothing, so I hit the reset button.
This is where the fun starts. My comp won't boot back up. It gets past the memory test and that junk, but then it goes to the mode select screen.
It says at the bottom that there is a registry/configuration error, and that I should run regscan to fix it. It also gives me the option to start in normal mode, safe mode, step-by-step configuration, etc.
If you try to start in safe mode, it loads the background in the very distorted manner of safemode, but won't do ANYTHING else. It won't bring up the log in prompt, won't load anything.
So, I try normal mode. It comes up with the 'windows has located new hardware' screen, but doesn't say what it found. If you choose to not let it search for new hardware, it just shows a distorted background but doesn't load anything or bring up the sign in screen.
If you let it search for hardware, it only looks in the floppy drive, but of course doesn't find anything, so I chose finish to see if it would load. Well, then an error message popped up, saying exactly
SURegCreateKey failed
The status bar portion had "Enum\HTREE\ROOT\O"
My computer's home built, and for some reason, I didn't think I needed to bring the boot up disk or even the windows ME install cd... So, I'm between a rock and a hard place it seems.
BIOS seems to check out. I extensively looked at it, but since my hard copy of all my settings in it is also at home.........
What do you guys think? Virus? Hack? Or just a simple reg error? What can I do? I have norton antivirus and firewall, and both are up to date as of Wednesday. What do I do? My entire life is on that computer.....
(I have the idea that if I can get to another computer, I can yank out my hard drive from mine and set it up as a slave on the other computer, burn those files that I don't want to lose, then either format that hard drive, or whatever. I have to worry that if it is a virus it could transfer itself to the other computer. I'm interested in any method to actually KEEP this hard drive intact. No, I don't want a Mac at this point, and I know I should have already had XP. If I had money, I'd already have a Mac and a PC set up with XP Pro.)
Thanks to everyone who tries to help me out here in advance. I'm really stressed right now over all this....
I was browsing around the internet, and actually tried to load automags.org Well, my broswer completely froze, and wouldn't do anything. So, I axed it and restarted another browser. It would load my home page(which, btw, is set to http://www.vanderbilt.edu no, I'm not advertising my school) Now, if I clicked on any link on my home page, or tried to put in another internet site, it would freeze.
Alright, so I figured it was just a generic problem. My computer regularly gives me those. So, I tried to restart. It froze when it was trying to shut down. alt+ctrl+del didn't help, nothing, so I hit the reset button.
This is where the fun starts. My comp won't boot back up. It gets past the memory test and that junk, but then it goes to the mode select screen.
It says at the bottom that there is a registry/configuration error, and that I should run regscan to fix it. It also gives me the option to start in normal mode, safe mode, step-by-step configuration, etc.
If you try to start in safe mode, it loads the background in the very distorted manner of safemode, but won't do ANYTHING else. It won't bring up the log in prompt, won't load anything.
So, I try normal mode. It comes up with the 'windows has located new hardware' screen, but doesn't say what it found. If you choose to not let it search for new hardware, it just shows a distorted background but doesn't load anything or bring up the sign in screen.
If you let it search for hardware, it only looks in the floppy drive, but of course doesn't find anything, so I chose finish to see if it would load. Well, then an error message popped up, saying exactly
SURegCreateKey failed
The status bar portion had "Enum\HTREE\ROOT\O"
My computer's home built, and for some reason, I didn't think I needed to bring the boot up disk or even the windows ME install cd... So, I'm between a rock and a hard place it seems.
BIOS seems to check out. I extensively looked at it, but since my hard copy of all my settings in it is also at home.........
What do you guys think? Virus? Hack? Or just a simple reg error? What can I do? I have norton antivirus and firewall, and both are up to date as of Wednesday. What do I do? My entire life is on that computer.....
(I have the idea that if I can get to another computer, I can yank out my hard drive from mine and set it up as a slave on the other computer, burn those files that I don't want to lose, then either format that hard drive, or whatever. I have to worry that if it is a virus it could transfer itself to the other computer. I'm interested in any method to actually KEEP this hard drive intact. No, I don't want a Mac at this point, and I know I should have already had XP. If I had money, I'd already have a Mac and a PC set up with XP Pro.)
Thanks to everyone who tries to help me out here in advance. I'm really stressed right now over all this....
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