Registry replaced, unusual reaction, any ideas?

Yesterday, 6/1, I was rebooting to safe mode to do a defrag when i got the
message

I first tried f8, apparently I needed to wait until "Windows Starting" but I
didn't and got a device boot menu.

I tried again, holding f5 down, I got "Warning. Corrupted Registry".

It installed a working registry from backup. But did not tell me how old it
was.

From some file dates, I determine it was at least prior to 4/24/05, but not
much older. Reason: I can track certain keys that were there before the
restore but are now gone and some not too much prior to that that are still
there.

So I enabled menu in the MSCONFIG generaladvanced (no problem)

Anyway, all that to get to this:

Certain keys that i restored now act differently. Specifically, keys that I
had entered, or that were in App Paths (
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\App Paths )

And those that i have restored, now react differently.

Where i used to be able to START (MS-DOS command) the applications if the
App Path keys existed in that key block, now the START commands opens a "My
Computer" window focused on the App .exe. It does not open the application.
It used to.

Examples will be provided as requested

I pretty much count on the START command. Any ideas?

jrp