I apologize now if my question sounds all over the place but I've tried this install over 15 times now with no luck and I'm a bit PC illiterate which makes me dangerous in these circumstances (I try before I know or think). Thanks for any help you may offer....

I was having numerous issues with program crashes so I decided to reinstall windowsMe hoping this would clean up any problems. I did not turn off my nortons anti virus software or go into msconfig and turn off any unnecessary startups before hand ;unfortunately I read about this after the fact .

I have tried to do this first from within windows (the install kept freezing up looking for some nortons anti virus files on numerous reboots) and then from the CDRom setup. It kept freezing up and crashing and sometimes looking for a nortons file (from a dos screen). I kept rebooting hoping it would finish. It won't go into safe mode (kept freezing before it came up), it wouldn't boot up in normal mode.

After numerous reboots, It finally went back to the windows setup screen and starting looking for hardware. It never mentioned what hardware it was looking for, I followed the prompts to not install the mystery hardware and it gave me the error message" SURegCreateKey failed" and when I hit OK, the reinstall failed again.

I've searched under that error message and when I tried scanreg/restore, there were no registry files found. I looked under the sysbckup folder and it was empty.

I was unable to back up all my important files b4 I started the reinstall so I can't reformat the hard drive and start over.

Is there any type of "generic" registry file I could download and copy it into the sysbckup folder to restore just to finish the reinstall and get to my files? I do have another PC on the internet I could use for whatever. Or is there any pctools fixes I could download/buy that would work from DOS to repair this install?

Thanks again for reading and any help offered, I'm desperate at this point.

Hi SKT

Welcome to PCHF

Try booting with the ME floppy and at the A: prompt type Scanreg /restore NOT Scanreg/restore, note the space.

Thanks for getting back to me, I've been without internet access for a few days now and was hoping someone would answer.

I retried what you instructed (with the space) and all I got was "no backups were found to restore" I hit OK and got "system operation restore failed". I found an article that said the backup files were found at c:\windows\sysbckup and that's where no files were found. The article said to look for files names rb000.ca, rb001.cab etc. but none were there.

Someone at work said I should copy an rb*.cab file from another computer and just copy it into that directory on my machine and retry the "restore". What do you think? It wouldn't be from the same type of system, only the same operating system.

I'll be online for a little while (am on a neighbor's pc) but will be checking back periodically for a response.

Thanks again !

Well I've sniffed around everywhere on this but I have to say in my personal opinion, I think you have somehow managed to wipe the drive of all files totally.
If there is nothing there to import cab files to then it's pointless wouldn't you agree?
To me you will have to format and do a complete brand new install of ME.
What you could try is installing it as slave in another pc then try to get any personal stuff back that way.

Yea, that was my other thought (the slave idea). The files are still there, the only files that seem to be missing are the registry backup files. I have always had issues with my reinstalls with ME, I always forget to "shut off" nortons.

Before I do try the slave thing ,did you have any thoughts on the copy of a rb*.cab file from another PC? and to throw more wood on this fire, I heard from a friend about a program that's out there (don't have the name right now) that can wipe out an exisiting registry file, leaving the other files intact, making it appear that windows has a "fresh" install to do.

Can you gather I'm trying to avoid taking apart my pc and removing the hard drive at almost all costs !

You seem to have a lot of friends SKT with only partial advice, I can only suggest to you the course I would take, i.e; brand new install.
And as for programs that can delete individual Registry entries I would leave that well alone.