[Zavien Doombringer]

YOU can boot to the 2000 CD and reinstall, OR you can FDISK, Reformat, Install *note* you will have to add all applications again, all your personal stuff will be lost then. I suggest you try the first option I gave you. (read my profile)

[tubebender]

No help here (Mac Family) but I'll bump it for you

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[Semper Paratus]

By 'magic disk' are you referring to a recovery boot disk.
You may have a corrupted registery probably caused by a virus. The boot disk may, and I mean may, get you enough access to repair the registry.

Otherwise you may have to reinstall. If you don't have an original cd with the 'key code' you'll either have to buy W2000 or talk somebody who has one to let you borrow it.

Very similar thing happened to me yesterday.

[AppyPappy]

Are you saying you don't know the administrator password?

[maryz]

Wish I could remember the names of some of the computer mavens around here -- Lord knows there are plenty.

But BTTT anyway!

[Not_Who_U_Think]

Check your CMOS or setup settings (by pressing F10 or whatever it takes to go into setup when it starts up, some use F2 or the delete key) and make the CD drive first choice for startup. Insert W2K CD. You should get a prompt to 'start from CD' when booting up now. Take it, go through the prompts to install W2K over the original copy. Leave the format of the disk as it is. It will reinstall W2K and leave your program files alone. You may have to recreate your desktop, depending on you configuration though.

Probably what happened was an incomplete install of an update or some such.

[Constitution Day]

I dunno how to help you, but maybe it was that "q" at the end of your list name that caused the crash!!

All kidding aside, best of luck. Hope you get it fixed soon.

[Reeses]

If you go to www.microsoft.com and do some research there are elaborate instructions on how to restore your registry files to a prior version. A much easier way is to remove your hard drive and plug it in as a secondary drive on an alternate machine. Then you can simply rename the 5 files to a version before your problems started. Once you do that your machine will boot like it used to and you will not lose any files. I have done this trick several times and it is nice to not have to reinstall everything. If you can't find the help at MS I will research it for you later. Whatever you do, don't reinstall the operating system yet. It is usually not necessary.

[dennisw]

Don't you have files and information you want to save? If you don't then just put the win 2k disc in and reboot your computer. You *may* have to adjust your bios to enable a boot from CD.

Just reinstall win2k over your existing version which will be wiped out in the process

[B Knotts]

[coloradan]

Pick it up and shake it.

No, wait, that's for the Etch-a-Sketch.

[Not_Who_U_Think]

More than a few had problems with the Sp3 update. If you could get it up in safe mode you could try uninstalling Sp3, but in this case use the reinstall instructions I gave and you'll be ok.

[11th Earl of Mar]

You first need to log in.

[mbynack]

Isn't there a "Registry Restore" command that you can use to restore the previous version of registry? I thought that it was contained in the Win 2000 operating system, but it might be an aftermarket software program.

I use Norton Antivirus and I try to keep the restore disk up to date. It saved me a lot of trouble when my system was infected with KLEZ32.

[JudyB1938]

I hope you don't mind if I scoot in here and ask a question myself.

I have Win 98. Tried to do Critical Update. There's no place to click for Win 98. Plus it wants a password for the upgrades - which I don't have.

Did they stop servicing this version of Windows?