User.dat help

I was under the assumption that I could open user.dat with notepad/wordpad but thats a no go. All I get is these square o's and funky looking objects. That being said, whats the way to view/edit user.dat?

According to one of my kids, solitaire will not run. So I checked and all I got was a general protection fault whenever I click on it to open. Figuring the file was corrupt I uninstalled, then reinstalled it. Same error.

I did a search on Google and the only possible cause was something to do with Bonzai Buddy. That has never been installed on my computer but I did a registry search and came up clean. I search user.dat and a reference was found. Now I need to get in user.dat to remove the reference.

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

User.dat is part of the registry. Edit the registry and your editing user.dat. As to your solitaire error do you have a microsoft mouse with intellipoint software installed? If so, try shutting down point32 and then see what happens. One version of Intellipoint software caused the same thing on one of my computers. I believe it was version 4.0. Could be wrong though. In any event, try shutting down all programs that are running in the background. Been my experience that errors like this in the MS games are usaually caused by another program that's running.

 

Hi Zander,

I know that user.dat and system.dat make up the registry. I was just confused when I searched the registry for "bonzai" I only got a reference in the "Doc Find Spec MRV" folder. I understand that this only showed up because I made a search for bonzai. I didn't know if the reference was the same as the registry. That's why I wanted to open user.dat and see. I sure wasn't going to fiddle around with anything. If there was a different reference for bonzai than what the registry showed then I would have posted to see if it would be safe to remove.

I've never had a microsoft mouse with intellipoint so I ruled that out.

I did restart my computer and close all running applications. Sol.exe worked perfectly. I then restarted and closed the applications one at a time to see if I could pinpoint which program was causing the problem. Come to find out my anti virus program is the culprit. Now I ask myself, anti virus or solitaire? Sorry kids, and grandkids, bye bye solitaire.

I guess the only thing to do now is visit the web site and see if they are aware of this, maybe have a patch. I use the free version of AVG in case any of you have heard of this problem from others.

Thanks Zander.

 

The System.dat and User.dat are not meant to be edited.

They are both built and maintained by the system.

BB

 

dopey

I advise aginst it but if you do wish to mess with sytsem or user,dat files make sure you have the latest RB00x.cab file in the C:\Window\sysbackup folder and know how to do a scanreg /restore for the command prompt at bootup.

A corrupted user.dat WILL STOP windows from loading.

BillyBob

 

dopey
I did some searching on this in the google groups and it seems there are more than just you with this problem. The threads I read were all unresolved except one person said that he disabled just the email scanning part of AVG and was then able to play the game. Maybe you want to give that a try. Seems to me that the email thing is redundant anyway. Watch the war begin now!

 

Dopey, Are you missing a file called cards.dll on the PC ?
regards

 

dopey

It is a no go but you can export, via Regedit, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, which is the same as HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT if you don't have profiles, and view in Wordpad. Notepad will baulk at such a large file and offer the services of Wordpad.

It can be an interesting read but it makes War and Peace look like a passing comment - my export has 58989 lines!

WARNING :This is for viewing purposes only - do not even dream about editing and merging into the registry.

PS I've used this method to examine the CURRENT_USER and LOCAL_MACHINE Software key as it saves time opening keys in Regedit - the export has every key opened!

 

BillyBob

No, I do not wish to mess with sys.dat and user.dat files. I thought I needed to. Glad I didn't. I have enough problems as it is. Thanks for the info tho.


Zander

I disabled the email in AVG and sure enough, that did it.
It had never crossed my mind that any of my startup programs would have been the problem. I guess the best way to learn about computer problems is to have them. Gotta go see what else I can dig up. Much thanks.

Merlin

I searched and found the file in the System folder. Thanks for the thought tho.

gammaepsilon

Wow. That is a huge file. I'll need a vacation to look this over.
Glad to know it can be done. Easier to see whats what. (What I can understand anyway.) Thanks.

 

VERY GOOD decision on your part.

It would be very nice if there were another way but there ain't.

BillyBob

 

quote:
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It would be very nice if there were another way but there ain't
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I see that now. Thanks.