Windows 98SE Registry Reconstruction help

My dad had a fan go out in his removable hard drive bay, corrupting his copy of Win98SE. I can load the safe mode, but when I try booting in normal mode I get the following message:

While initializing device CONFIGMG:
Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer.

I've powered it up many times, searched the help file with no luck, and found the section in the register labeled as such. I'm not afraid to dink around the register on some things, but I'm way over my head on this one.

Is there a way to get the computer to reconstruct the register without loosing all the programs? I know I can reinstall without killing the program files (but all the desktop links are toast), and it is easier to reconstruct programs by reinstalling them, but I would really like to keep the computer and its files (including desktop) intact. May be too much to hope for, but it's my hope.

Being a removable HD, I have other copies of windows 98SE to compare with, with the same devices installed. I don't know if this can help, but it is a thought.

Being my Dad's computer, there aren't any registry backups. My bad, since I am the nearest thing to a computer tech in this family. I've learned a lot, but have a lot more to learn.

I'm wide open to suggestions. Thanks.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=187612&sd=RMVP

 

Success!!! <Snoopy Dance>

OK, I'm telling on myself here, but it might help someone else sometime.

First, whilst troubleshooting my Dad's lockup problems I dinked with the hard drives a bit. Problem was close to there, a faulty fan with in the removable drive enclosures (same setup as my personal machines, and all my family where I built the computers). The bays themselves had a slot to add a fan, and I had bought some to do the project with later, so I added several on the more critical bays. But I degress...

Somewhere messing with it and replacing the faulty drive docking bay I swapped primary and secondary cables. Small text on MB is getting harder to see every year. This wasn't the problem, but it muddied the waters some. Fortunately in installing another disk with XP (Fathers Day don'tcha know) the disk mangler showed that problem up. So I swapped the cables back.

Problem was still there, although XP was slightly happier, it didn't work either. Going through the BIOS I noticed where I had dropped the CPU/DRAM speed to allow a 1.2 Gig processor to work (I swapped to eliminate the CPU from the lockups). I bumbed them back up to match the correct CPU (Athlon 2400) to 133Mhz/133Mhz and everything worked!

Not my finest hour, but what the he!!, Dad will be happy, and it's all geek to him.

Whew!

Now to backup the registry, after the disk surface scan is through (about 10 hours later, due to large HD sizes).

God, help me remember! Amen.