by cosmicB on Tue Aug 01, 2006 4:24 am
I'm making an effort to learn the basics of the W98se registry, so I can do my computer repairs myself...
Sometimes I makes stupid errors, but it's usually easy to correct by applying a registry backup, which sets it all back to what it was before I started messing in the registry...
One example of why one needs to modify the registry... Say you've uninstalled some unwanted software, and it took out your documents thumb pix previews.. or a registry cleaner software removed something it shouldn't have... What do you do to get previews back?.. Maybe the registry cleaner's undo will fix it.. maybe not..?
The computer repair shop will likely charge you 50-bucks to fix it... On top of that you must disconnect the tower, and deliver it to the shop, and wait a few days to a week, then pick up your repaired tower, pay the piper, take it home, and hook it all back up... A wasted half a day, or more.. plus the 50-bucks, the disconnecting everything, delivery, pickup, and reinstalling it all back into a working unit...
An alternative is to surf the Web for your problem...
In this case I surfed "lost documents thumb previews"... and I stumbled into a webpage that had a download called "thumbnail fix"... I downloaded it, and placed it on the desktop in a word file, then went into Run.. Regedit.. Registry tab.. Import.. and the new file I had just downloaded came up, and I added it to the registry...
I clicked on "My Documents", and my pix file.. and when the mouse cursor touched a pix title, up came the instant thumbnail preview... It was that easy...
This is the file I added to the registry to repair thumb pix previews:
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.art\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.bmp\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.dib\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.gif\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jfif\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jpe\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jpeg\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jpg\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.png\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.wmf\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.tif\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{1AEB1360-5AFC-11D0-B806-00C04FD706EC}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.tiff\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{1AEB1360-5AFC-11D0-B806-00C04FD706EC}"
..and suddenly thumb previews was working again...
__________________
The big thing about the registry is that when your PC catches a bug, it sets registry keys that mess-up how segments of your PC runs, or doesn't run... Generally a bug is a set of registry keys designed to disrupt your PC's registry so bad that the computer just won't work anymore...
If you have a clean registry backup, you can restore the registry to that backup, thereby deleting the bug's registry entries.. and after running a few cleanup softwares, your machine is running back to as it was before it caught the bug... That's what AVS, Anti-Spyware, firewalls, and registry cleanup software, does for you... They try to prevent those bugs from taking-hold by blocking them, and have features to delete bugs that got in... sometimes... but some evolved-bugs can't be deleted...
It is very important to learn how to establish a clean registry, and to create a registry backup, and to know how to apply it...
Learn that, and it will save you a lot of money and needless grief...
Last edited by
cosmicB on Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.
