Recovering XP - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

charliex · 07-20-2003, 02:11 PM

My hive was killed again, and got the infamous lsass.exe Object name not found error, which basically makes it round robin, it'll display that message then reboot, even in safe mode.

So i had a problem a few days again with disappearing disk space and i had turned off system restore (forgot to turn it back on ), the culprit had been WMI logging, which if you use BotoVis and leave the logging on, it'll burn up gigs of data in a day.

Luckily i had the recovery console installed, but you cn do that off the CD too.

So i booted it up into recovery console.
1. login to correct windows setup, usually only 1.
2. copy the bad registry hives to a tmp folder
(basically its all $WINDIR\system32\config for software, default, sam, system, security )
so like $(WINDIR)\tmp use mkdir c:\name of windows dir\tmp
and copy each of the files, since recovery console doesn't allow wildcards.

then copy all the backup registry files ( this is if you are dumb like me and turned off system restore

)
in the widnows root (usually c:\windows) there is a recovery folder, copy each of those files to the system32\config folder,
same again system,software,default,security,sam etc

now type exit reboot, and its a fresh copy of windows except the admin password wil be the same, no other users.. it may want to activate, you dont need to do this, now you may have a "system volume information" folder on the root drive with a bunch of GUID based filenames, look for a very recent one, and if you have it you are in luck and you can copy i back, if not, reboot back to the recovery console.
now copy the backup files you made, but only copy system, and software so from say c:\windows\tmp\software.bak C:\windows\system32\config\software etc

once you do that you can reboot again, it should load only with administrator, log in, create a username with the same name as before, log off and on as the new user, and hopefully all the settings and documents will be as they were before, some things will have gone back to default, but on the whole it should be there.

if not then use the file and settings copier to copy over the
settings.

Those won't work if the system or software hives were the ones damaged, but with the lsass error its usually the security one thats borked, you can play around with copying the various files til you find the bad one and then just copy all the others, using the one from the repair folder or the system volume information folder to get a working system. I'm happy at system/software usually.

From what i've seen most people recommend a repair of XP with the lsass error, but that often kills all your settings, and in some cases doesn't fix the error.

The registry hive i think is the worst feature of windows, its too easy to kill it, ini files might be a PITA in some ways, but decentralizing the systems database IMHO is a lot better way to go about it, just seems overly complicated and very delicate.

07-20-2003, 02:11 PM	#1 (permalink)
charliex Junkie Location: North Hollywood	Recovering XP My hive was killed again, and got the infamous lsass.exe Object name not found error, which basically makes it round robin, it'll display that message then reboot, even in safe mode. So i had a problem a few days again with disappearing disk space and i had turned off system restore (forgot to turn it back on ), the culprit had been WMI logging, which if you use BotoVis and leave the logging on, it'll burn up gigs of data in a day. Luckily i had the recovery console installed, but you cn do that off the CD too. So i booted it up into recovery console. 1. login to correct windows setup, usually only 1. 2. copy the bad registry hives to a tmp folder (basically its all $WINDIR\system32\config for software, default, sam, system, security ) so like $(WINDIR)\tmp use mkdir c:\name of windows dir\tmp and copy each of the files, since recovery console doesn't allow wildcards. then copy all the backup registry files ( this is if you are dumb like me and turned off system restore ) in the widnows root (usually c:\windows) there is a recovery folder, copy each of those files to the system32\config folder, same again system,software,default,security,sam etc now type exit reboot, and its a fresh copy of windows except the admin password wil be the same, no other users.. it may want to activate, you dont need to do this, now you may have a "system volume information" folder on the root drive with a bunch of GUID based filenames, look for a very recent one, and if you have it you are in luck and you can copy i back, if not, reboot back to the recovery console. now copy the backup files you made, but only copy system, and software so from say c:\windows\tmp\software.bak C:\windows\system32\config\software etc once you do that you can reboot again, it should load only with administrator, log in, create a username with the same name as before, log off and on as the new user, and hopefully all the settings and documents will be as they were before, some things will have gone back to default, but on the whole it should be there. if not then use the file and settings copier to copy over the settings. Those won't work if the system or software hives were the ones damaged, but with the lsass error its usually the security one thats borked, you can play around with copying the various files til you find the bad one and then just copy all the others, using the one from the repair folder or the system volume information folder to get a working system. I'm happy at system/software usually. From what i've seen most people recommend a repair of XP with the lsass error, but that often kills all your settings, and in some cases doesn't fix the error. The registry hive i think is the worst feature of windows, its too easy to kill it, ini files might be a PITA in some ways, but decentralizing the systems database IMHO is a lot better way to go about it, just seems overly complicated and very delicate.