XP Pro registry advice sought

I have two identical Dell Dimension 9100 machines both running XP Pro. I have two problems to solve on one of them.

1. Recently, probably due to some tinkering, one of the machines briefly flashes the message: "autochk.exe not found--skipping autocheck" when booting. Then it proceeds to boot normally.

I looked at the windows\system32 folder and autochk.exe is there. On the chance that it was corrupted, I extracted a new copy from the original i386 directory on the install disk. Still no luck; same message on rebooting.

So I did a search for "autochk" in the registries of both machines. Aha! I found that on the affected one, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager that the following value was missing: [ab] BootExecute REG_MULTI_SZ Autocheck autochk *

How do I manually re-enter that value without possibly screwing things up?

2. Question number two: On that same machine, quite awhile back I had a USB Zip Drive that I removed without using the Safely Remove Hardware tool. As a result the "Removable Disk (K" icon shows in My Computer, even though I deleted all the software and went through the registry deleting everything I could find that referenced K: I no longer have that drive, so reinstalling it and then removing it the proper way is not an option. Any suggestions on how to make the Removable Disk (K icon go away? Minor nuisance, but I figure the less clutter in the registry the better. By any chance, might jv16 Power Tools 2009 (which I haven't tried) do the job?

Thanks in advance!

Per

 

Good sleuthing!
I would set the machines close to each other and put up the registry you want to duplicate from the good one.
Then navigate to the correct place in the victim. Adding a Registry entry is not difficult. Right click and add the right type, etc. With the other one in plain view you will be fine.

Have you tried to right click computer/manage/disk Management to get rid of the drive?

 

Hmmm.... After hours of fiddling, I give up. Using regedit, I was able to create the subkey I need in the path I cited before: [ab]BootExecute TearHairOut autocheck autochk *

The TearHairOut part is what does me in. I can't change the Dword Type from what IT wants to put in: REG_EXPAND_SZ to what I need to change it to: REG_MULTI_SZ.

I gave everything and everyone listed under Advanced full permission for read and write. Still can't change it.

Searches on the web seem to indicate that the Dword Type can not be modified with regedit and that regedt32.exe which is not included on the install disk is needed. However, there are multiple warnings that regedt32 may contain all kinds of malware so I avoided downloading it.

Any advice on how to modify the Type subkey? (To be safe, since the computer booted normally except for the missing autochk message, I removed the string that I tried to create.) Of course I backed up the registry first--I think.

As for the non-existent drive icon, Device Manager does not see it, so I can't delete it from there. It still shows up on Computer, though.

Thanks for your help so far. I've gotten deeper into this stuff than before, but still am not fully registry-literate.

Per

 

you can safely remove that registry entry

I have had todo it before when autocheck don't clean up after its self

 

You create your own Dword with a right click and name it however you want.
Then delete the offending one.

Perhaps the Bios has your drive? Take a look there. I had a notebook that kept a drive that I removed and it was listed as available in the BIOS so Windows kept assigning a letter. All I did in the BIOS was take it off the bootable list and it went away. Worth a shot.

 

I used the right click. Edit/New works on the Name and Data subkeys, but NOT on the "Type" dword subkey that I want to change. Perhaps leaving it as is and rebooting will fix it? Or screw thing further up? Nervous about messing around too much with the registry stuff.

Clueless...

Per

 

I did try creating a new dword as you described. But when I right click on any of the subkeys, including the dword one, a little box box pops up that says "New." Hit <enter> and it creates a new subkey named New. I can rename New to whatever I want, and also put whatever I want in the Data field but there is no option I can find to change the dword between them that by default sets itself as REG_EXPAND_SZ. Right clicking on that simply creates an entire other "New" key. Somehow I have to change the dword to REG_MULTI_SZ but so far I can't.

Also, how to access the BIOS to see if it has captured the non-existent drive? I assume by hitting F12 during bootup to access the BIOS setup. I did that but the drive does not appear there either.

Computers can be so much fun.

Per

 

Not installing dual boot. By tinkering, I meant I was trying to get rid of a multitude of registry fingerprints left behind when I uninstalled Lavasoft's Ad-Aware.

To fix things, I recreted the the BootExecute key and the data value which is text, but couldn't change the defualt REG_SZ that it placed automatically I tried exporting ithe branch into a text file that contains the DataType Key I want to change from REG_SZ to REG_MULTI_SZ since the Value is a text string consisting of two words and an *. Then I edited it with Notepad, renamed the .txt extension to .reg and tried importing. I didn't work so I restored a backup registry that I had saved just before doing this.

How in the dickens does one change the characters of the Dword Type? As I said, right clicking does not give that option.

 

Typically, what Halo suggests, fixes that particular issue.

The line you want to look at is BootExecute. It should be REG_MULTI_SZ

The default entry should be autocheck autochk *

I checked this on windows 7 (7100) at home, and my work computer xp sp3.

 

You're right on all counts. Except that I can't change BOOT_SZ to the desired BOOT_MULTI_SZ. Everything else is easily changeable new-key creatable--EXCEPT for the DWORD. :cry