Lostgallifreyan wrote:
"Bill in Co" wrote in
m:

I think some of us techies don't mind playing in there, but I still
wouldn't recommend it for the newbies. Plus we all have backups, and
know how and when to use them, which is not so for the newbies. Plus if
I remember this thread right, the OP was only talking about removing
some leftover (and harmless) spurious entries, which have no impact
anyway. (yes, I know there are exceptions to that, but they are the
exceptions).




He's in there. No stopping him. So what do we do? Stand and watch him
sink, or throw him a float? One thing's for sure, if he didn't want to
be
in there, he wouldn't be. The suggestions I made would not arise in a case
where someone was totally unfamiliar, and showed no signs of going in for
any
reason.

I'd say if he's just going in to remove some spurious entries he doesn't
like seeing, and he's not all that familiar with regedit to begin with, to
skip it. It's not worth the potential risk, IMHO. Removing some traces of
leftover entries isn't a good reason to mess with the registry, UNLESS it is
causing issues, which it isn't. I know what can happen when you don't know
what you're doing in there. :-)

I'd still recommend Ghost in that case though, because if they can backup
the
whole OS, they'll never have to endure a breakage for long because they
will
always have that easy way out, losing nothing but a few recent configs, so
long as they know where their files are.

If he's just messing with the registry, ERUNT might be enough, but a backup
image or clone of C: would probably be the best.

Re the files, I know a lot of those who are that bew to an OS don't know
where they are. Microsoft hide file extensions and locations, people are
encouraged to imaging the file has no existence outside the program that
handles it! But this is just irresponsible lunacy, making people beleive
that. As kids we don't want to beleive that our food COSTS something, but
no-
one would argue that kids should reach adolescense still beleiving that.

The world is full of lunacy. The question becomes, at what point do we
enter Don Quixote land. :-)