Dual Boot Windows 2000 and Ghost

Posted on November 4th, 2002 in Uncategorized by Jay

For some time now, I’ve been using Norton Ghost to make perfect backups of my computers. The one thing about Ghost that gets old, is you have to boot up to DOS with a floppy disk or CD-ROM in order to make the backup. In addition to requiring a boot floppy, I keep my BIOS set to only boot to the hard drive so I don’t accidently boot up a floppy and risk infecting my computer with a virus.

I decided to figure out how to dual boot Windows 2000 and DOS so I can boot up to DOS on the hard drive and run Ghost without popping in floppy disks and changing BIOS settings to allow the computer to boot to the floppy.

Recovering From a SYSTEMced Error

Posted on October 16th, 2002 in Uncategorized by Jay

Note: This procedure has been superceeded by the availability of the Windows 2000 Registry Repair Utility. Please see my tip on how to make it into a bootable CD and try it before you try this tip.

The Windows 2000 SYSTEMced error occurs when the system can’t load the SYSTEM hive of the registry. The reasons include the SYSTEM hive being damaged, missing or too large to load.

The cause I’ve experienced most often has been the hive being too large to load. The SYSTEM hive has to share 16 MB of memory with several other processes when it is first read so if the hive is 16 MB and the other processes take up 3 MB it just can’t be read. Microsoft has instructions for recovering from a hive that gets too large in knowledge base article Q269075. However, I’ve never been able to recover a system using only the method they specify. Microsoft assumes that the SYSTEM hive is too large because there are a large number of shared resources and their fix is to eliminate the key of the hive with the shares in it.

Cleaning up after Internet Explorer

Posted on March 28th, 2002 in Uncategorized by Jay

Internet Explorer leaves pieces of information from browsing all over the place and doesn’t clean up after itself when you’re done browsing. Whether your concerned about privacy or just don’t like having all the garbage lying around, this one’s for you.

You use this script at your own risk. I am not a programmer. I just occasionally hack together code that gets the job done. If this script should happen to go wild and hose your computer you’ve been warned.

CleanExplore.vbs

This script replaces launching IE directly. Instead CleanExplore launches IE and watches it. When IE exits the script wakes up and deletes Typed URLs, Cookies, the Cache and History files. It will not remove any index.dat files or any subfolders that are not empty.

Installation:
Copy this file anywhere you like. If IE is not in the standard location change the strIEPath variable below. Replace your IE shortcuts with shortcuts to this script. Rename them to Internet Explorer for transparency and change the icon to the big blue E.