Thanks for the advice

I've got it all sorted out now. As I save numerous copies of everything, it is not too long before I am up and running again. It is not understanding the easier ways of doing things that is unpleasant. I rely on experience rather than training...of which I have none.

Your advice would have been more beneficial if I had saved the values, or knew where they were "hidden" so that they could have been saved. As I said before, I tried importing the saved registry from an earlier time, but for some reason it did not work. I can edit a registry, it is just knowing what to put into the various keys that's at issue.

I don't understand why Windows cannot "actively" read/write itself backwards ... i.e. look at the tree, then write [action] a path in the registry denoting that path... The fact that it appears in Explorer at all, as a normal tree, can only be "seen" by the user if a "known template" of that tree exists, and the template is "filled" with the appropriate folders and files... So somewhere, there is a completly organized copy of the registry cached, for Explorer to work at all... Then I would expect a "Norton Commander" like approach to be taken...match the cached copy to the registry in need of repair. The old regedit /fix [if memory serves me] command does not work in XP, on NTFS.

The dumbest thing MS ever did was to dispense with DOS as a managable platform for the user to repair things on. Yes, it's there, but only in limited usefulness, at the command prompt...quite useless for real serious stuff!

Until "we" go to a complete open source OS we will be at the mercy of MS. And this oldster is too far gone to try to learn Linux.