Too Make A Long Story Short
This is what I want to know. Is there a way to scan and fix a registry that is not currently being used by Windows – such as my XP Home registry?

Background Knowledge
I have a Compaq Presario R3000 notebook with a 3.0GHz P4 and 640MB RAM running XP Home SP2. I use Norton SystemWorks 2006 and do not let spyware get installed on my computer. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest, I rate my knowledge level at 8.

Problem
I’ve recently deleted a lot of large files from my computer and figured now would be a great time to defrag. Instead of using SpeedDisk, I decided to use System Mechanic 5 (SM). I’ve never used the program, but the reviews looked pretty good. So I install SM and start to defrag. Towards the end of the process, a Windows dialog box pop’s up and says something like, “Files that are required to run Windows efficiently have been replaced. Please insert your Windows XP Home disk to fix this error.” Well, I didn’t. I figured it was just a routine process that System Mechanic does when moving files. I keep using the computer and everything is fine – and then I restart.

After I restarted the computer, I started having a lot of weird problems. The task bar was solid gray, and I could not run any programs of any file type. I kept getting the error message, “This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application my fix this problem.” I’ve never seen this before.

Then I decided to do an in place reinstall. I go through the operation like I’ve always done, and once it is completed, I let windows boot as normal. This time if flashed a BSOF message and would not ever load at all. I had some important family pictures on the computer that were taken that week, so I had to get on it ASAP to save those to disk. I installed a second OS, Windows XP Pro, so I could get my files and back things up that were new since my last full-system backup. That works, and the new installation works fine – no problems at all.

This is what I want to know. Is there a way to scan and fix a registry that is not currently being used by Windows – such as my XP Home registry?

PS - I am getting error message "stop error 0x0000007b"

I know this has been long, but thank you so much for taking the time to help me with this issue.

Sincerely,
Steven Gabbard
http://www.osensnolf.com

Hold

Thanks for reading. Please hold on all comments for right now. I think I may have been able to restore the registry. I will post another reply tomorrow afternoon.

Again, thanks for reading.

Steven Gabbard