Page 2 of 2

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 4:15 pm
by RobertGonzalez
This is an experience I had with my wife's XP Home machine recently (and continue to still have)...

She: "What does a 'corrupt hive file' warning on a Blue Screen mean?"
Me: "That can't be good, whatever it is. Let me check."
Scampers off to Google 'corrupt hive file'.


Come to find out that for no good reason Windows experienced a problem that corrupted the registry hive file. Yup, the registry. That means that the basic brains of the OS are now wonked. Revert to last known good install? Nope, doesn't work. The only thing that works is to rename the file to something else and start Windows over as though it were a fresh install. None of the software is recognized, so I had to reinstall all of the applications on her machine in order for her to continue to use it. The nice thing... it remembered her old profile so getting her files back was easy. But the apps that created them were suddenly gone.

After I finished installing the apps I attempted to install the printer driver. Sorry. Half way through that the install app decided to shutdown midstream because the .NET framework was missing an installer application. So I went to the MS web site to get an updated framework installed. Sorry. Cannot install the new framework because the installer application is missing. Downloaded the installer. Tried to install it. Sorry, cannot install the installer because your .NET framework is out of date.

Lets see... I need an installer to install the .NET framework, but I need to the .NEt framework to install the installer.

Meanwhile, every time her computer starts up she gets a .NET framework error that slows her systems down and there is no way to make that go away.

Thanks Microsoft. Really good stuff you guys put out. As soon as I can get a machine set up with Ubuntu she is going to learn that, then we are wiping that laptop and installing Ubuntu on it.

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 2:48 am
by matthijs
I've had no major problems with my macbook pro. A few software freezes, yes. But a reboot and a few seconds later I'm working again. With XP I always had to wait 10 mins for the disk check to finish after a reboot. I've never had to install hardware or drivers (so far plug and play worked), so I wouldn't know about issues there.