trouble accessing registry

Evry once in a while, when booting my system, I get a error message like "Windows is having trouble accessing the registry. Windows will restart and restore a good back up "
Was wondering what corrupts a registry, and how does such a hidden and vital part of the operating system become so seceptable to damage?
sidermike

 

The registry is a group of files and can get damaged leading to corruption as any file can. There are many MS Knowledge Base articles relating to different unmodified system files becoming damaged and what symtoms they produce. In over three years with 98 I've never had an unmodified system file corruption. However, I have seen the message you refer to but only a few times in that period - three or four times.

During a Windows session much of the 'registry' is in RAM and the 'registry' on the disk is flushed on a regular basis to keep it up to date. If the RAM where the registry is situated gets corrupted for some reason, from a program crash for example, and that corruption gets flushed then it may not be surface until the registry is scanned at the next boot. The odds are slim but I have seen a registry get corrupted on a bad uninstall.

How often is 'Every once in a while'?

 

i've seen it twice in the last month

 

That message can occur because of two things, bad ram, bad spot where the registry is stored on the hard drive. Here is a tip I have learned you can try the next time this occurs, it seems to do some good.
When the popup appears, do not click OK. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL, highlight the Registry Checker entry, and click End Task. You will get another window saying this program is not responding, again click End Task. Shut down, select Restart in Dos Mode. Type in this command at the prompt;
scanreg /fix
When it is done, you will get a popup saying Windows has repaired the registry, press enter and reboot.
Or, just do that command now.

 

'Twice in the last month' isn't, in itself, grounds for concern. There will probably be quite a few 98 users who have seen that but a small percentage. If this falls within your 'Every once in a while ...' and you are averaging two a month then something is wrong.

I endorse markp62's tip as this circumvents Windows restoring a backup when the current registry may pass a 'fix'. If it fails a 'fix' then you've lost nothing.

Your registry may be heavily fragmented both internally [wasted space] and externally [as any file can be].

Again I'd agree with markp62's suggestion of a 'fix' without further ado.

However, before you do anthing else if you have any registry cleaners now is the time to give then an airing.

Next, in DOS execute scanreg /fix. On completion, assuming a success, execute scanreg /opt. The latter will further compact the registry and is recommended by at least one member of Microsoft's staff.

If the drive where the registry resides is heavily fragmented then your new compacted registry may also be heavily fragmented so follow your registry 'tune up' with a drive defrag.

You will now have a registry without any wasted space and will be contiguous ie without any external fragmentaion; at least for the time being becuase the registry is a forever growing entity.

How often should you do this? For a casual user perhaps once every three months. For an average user perhaps once a month. I do mine every 7 to 10 days.

Hopefully, it may be quite a while before Windows has any trouble accessing the registry. If you are lucky you may never see it again!

 

A few weeks ago I had this problem happening at least once a day. Even when I run the scanreg fix program and delete all the cab files and making new backups.

I've had the problem since last year sometime, so me and my dad decided to put windows 98 onto a new hard drive and use the old one just for storing unimportant stuff, and everything was ok for about a week, then it all started again.

Now it is less frequent, once every few days, but I've refrained from installing anything for a while.

Also, I made backups on a zip disk which were checked by the scanregw program and seemed ok, but when I got an error I restored one of these backups and it still considered it corrupted.

The only thing i havent tried is optimising the registry so I'l do that. Are there any programs (preferably freeware) that can actually scan the registry and diagnose whats wrong?

 

You may have defective Ram or a virus infection.

Since this thread has gone quiet and your problem is different to sidermike's then I'd suggest you start a new thread entitled, say, 'Continued registry corruption.

Good luck.

 

Regcleaner
After installing this program and opening, after the license agreement and language selection. It will open, you will see a list of all software currently installed, and things you have uninstalled. You can see that not everything get removed. Check off everything you KNOW is not any longer installed. Note, if you have Norton installed, you may also see entries labeled Symnatec, leave those there. If you had uninstalled Norton, remove them both. After going through the list, have it remove them.
Then go to the Toolbar at Tools\Registry Cleaner\Do Them All. Remove the errors it finds. This program make backups of everything removed.
When done, shut down the computer, selecting Restart in Dos Mode. type in these two lines, pressing Enter at the end of each one. The first command will not appear to do anything.

scanreg /opt
scanreg /fix

When you get the message that Windows has repaired your registry, press Enter, then reboot.

 

Registry problem . I have the same problem but it only occrs after logging onto MSN

I have the same problem but it only occurs the next time I stert the computer after having been on MSN Messenger ,
It does not happen otherwise.