Erunt -Registry CRISIS *SOLVED*
 

Hi all,

New here to SysChat. I hope someone can point me in a right direction and I'm sorry this is a rather long post.

I found this entry by Sami... http://www.syschat.com/how-backup-co...ighlight=erunt and hopefully some others here are familiear with Erunt, as I'm very new with it.

I unzipped an Erunt install by zip file, as I was unaware it came with an installer so it's version E1.1j that I installed and I think I placed it in a folder on the desktop, just to try it out.

Then came crisis time that left me locked out of XP and needing to use the second restore I recently saved in Erunt, (as well as a restore point I saved). I ended up needing to do a restore from a problem safe mode won't even run on and figured no big deal... I used recovery console to boot into Windows where I cached the backed hives and there they sat waiting... WITHOUT Erndt.exe present as apparently this revision does not plant a copy of Erndt in the hive stash.

I managed to get a copy of Erndt.exe into the directory using boot disks, but when I launched Erndt, it scrolled an error past me about 10 times and stalled without making the restore.

My questions are these...

1. My own Admin privy account is named "Mike" and I'm wondering if Erndt can restore the 'Mike' Registry hive sections from within recovery mode?

2. Do I need to establish an Erndt.inf or other to direct Erndt, since I cannot get to the original desktop directory from within Recovery Console?

3. Will Erndt be able to restore that hive section, (Mike), from the boot status of recovery console at all, since the console is not logged on as Mike?

4. Is there a way to grab a "named" restore point from Recovery Mode? (Restore last working at F8 did not help, but there was a valid restore saved 2 hours before the crisis)?

5. Is there a way otherwise to tweak the registry from Recovery Console as all I really need to do is switch on some msconfig driver run entries, to solve the actual problem?

Any help on how to get this restore back to it's original hive would be greatly appreciated. I don't have another XP machine handy to slave that drive to for copying off data and the most recent backup I have is five days old, so I really would hate to lose the 5 days of data.

Thanks so much.

Hi Mike,

Erunt also creates Autobackup's in this folder C:\WINDOWS\ERDNT\AutoBackup please check that directory.

It does'nt matter where you unzipped your Erunt and installed it from, since each restore folder contains its own copy of the restore utility (ERDNT.EXE), which makes each backup self-contained.

Also try these steps below to restore your registry from Erunt developer.

Restoring the registry with ERDNT
---------------------------------

Situation: Windows is running normally.

To restore a previous registry backup, open Windows Explorer, navigate
to the folder where you saved the backup to, and double-click the
ERDNT.EXE file to start the restoration program. (Each restore folder
has its own copy of ERDNT.EXE in it.) Select which registry components
to restore, then click "OK" to start restoration. When the process is
complete, click "OK" to restart the computer and activate the restored
registry.

Note: If you experience any problems restoring the registry, please
read "ERDNT technical information" later in this document to learn
what ERDNT is actually doing during the process, or simply read on
through the following emergency scenarios for other ways of restoring
the registry.



What to do if Windows does not boot anymore?
--------------------------------------------

If Windows refuses to boot normally it can be for a variety of
reasons, not the least of which is that the registry is damaged, or
you installed a program or driver which is somewhat incompatible with
the system or buggy, in which case restoring a registry backup from a
point where everything was running smoothly should also help.

The first thing to try is to reboot and press the F8 key immediately
before the first Windows screen appears, then select the "Last Known
Good" option from the menu and see if Windows boots up with this
option. If it does, you're all set.

If it does not, reboot again with F8, and select the option "Safe
Mode". If Windows boots up in safe mode, you can restore a registry
backup just as you would in normal mode, as described above.

If safe mode also fails, read on...



Restoring the registry with ERDNT - Emergency Scenario I
--------------------------------------------------------

Situation: Windows fails to boot up in normal and safe mode, but you
have a DOS boot disk or another (working) operating system installed
on your PC which is supported by the ERDNT restoration program, and
from which you have full access to the drive(s) containing the corrupt
Windows installation and the registry backup.

Boot up to the working OS, and open the folder containing the registry
backup you want to restore.

If the drive letters are different to as they were in the Windows
where you created the registry backup, you need to edit the ERDNT.INF
file now to reflect the new drive letters, before trying to restore
the registry backup. For example, if the drive with the corrupt
Windows installation is now available as D: instead of C:, then you
would change all C:\... references in the INF file to D:\... . Editing
the file can be done in Windows with the Notepad program, and in DOS
with the EDIT command.

Now run the ERDNT.EXE file to start the restoration program. Select
which registry components to restore (just the system registry will do
in most cases), then start restoration. When the process is complete,
reboot the computer and check if the other Windows installation is
repaired now.



Restoring the registry with ERDNT - Emergency Scenario II
---------------------------------------------------------

Situation: Windows fails to boot up in normal and safe mode, and you
have no other working operating system installed on your PC.

The following two rescue methods require that your PC is configured so
that it can boot from CD. See your BIOS documentation for more
information.

1. Bart's PE Builder
Use another computer with Internet access and CD burning capabilities
to download this free program from the Internet (do a Google search
for it), which will create a bootable Windows CD with full access to
all drives (including NTFS). Boot from this CD, open the File
Management Utility and follow the directions in "Emergency Scenario I"
to run ERDNT and restore the registry.

2. The Windows Recovery Console (Windows 2000 and higher)
Note that you can use this method only if you saved the registry
backup inside the Windows folder, and that using this procedure only
the system registry is restored. This should however get you back into
Windows, from where you can run the ERDNT program to restore user
registries, if necessary.
- Boot your system from the Windows 2000/2003/XP CD-ROM.
- At the welcome screen, press "R" (Windows 2000: "R" then "C").
- Type in the number of the Windows installation you want to repair
(usually 1), then press ENTER.
- Type in the Administrator password (leave blank if you are unsure
what it is) and press ENTER.
- At the command prompt type
cd erdnt
or whatever you named your restore folder, then press ENTER.
- If you enabled automatic registry backup on system boot during ERUNT
installation and want to restore one of these backups, type
cd autobackup <ENTER>
- If you created subfolders for different registry backups (for
example, with the different creation dates), type
dir <ENTER>
to see a list of available folders, then type
cd foldername <ENTER>
where foldername is the name of a folder listed by the dir command,
to open that folder.
- Now type
batch erdnt.con <ENTER>
to restore the system registry from that folder.
- Type
exit <ENTER>
and remove the CD from the CD-ROM drive. The system will now reboot
with the restored registry.

Thanks Sami,

Please hang in there with me... Assume that I am "Emergency Scenario II, Part 2" using the recovery console...

First, as my original post indicated, this "zip" type copy of Erunt, version E1.1j, did not place a copy of Erdnt.exe in the hive cache it backed up, C:\Windows\Erdnt. There is only the back up data itself there.

That's why I moved a copy of Erdnt.exe in there manually.

Second, Erndt.exe will not have access to any of it's support files, such as any inf or ini files, it must be able to run stand alone, because the Erunt installed directory is trapped outside of the directory structure and Lars talks about correcting an Erdnt.inf file. (I don't think I need to do that, but the point is Erndt.exe is the only other file in the restore cache besides the backup).

Third, Lars instructions say to type "Batch Erdnt.CON". There is no .CON file in the directory, only Erdnt.exe which I put there manually.

When I run "Batch Erdnt.exe", I get 15 or so repeated lines of an error "The command is not recognized. Type Help for a list of support commands"., suggesting that the command processor in recovery console cannot execute .exe files.

Is there an Erdnt.con that I'm unaware of ?

And

Should Erdnt run unsupported or do I need to put an inf file in the hive cache with it?

Thanks still,

Mike

OK, what I've learned is by installing a copy of Erunt on my 98SE machine and forcing it to do a bland backup, (regardless of the different structures), is that the restore copy was supposed to have additional files in it, which Erunt did not create.

More likely it created them in my logon folder I was in at the time on xp, being \Mike\Windows, since I don't have a c:\ERDNT folder showing up in XP, only C:\Windows\Erndt, which again ONLY had the hive files in it.

Lars says this, later in his Readme file...


The additional structures created should have included...

Erdnt.con
Erdnt.inf
Erdntdos.loc
Erdntwin.loc

So, I'm wondering if this hive copy can even be restored from the recovery console, since it appears this should have been .bak files as Lars says he just re-copies the system portion of the registry.

Can anyone identify what the .con file should have as a content and if it's a human readable. Google has not helped any. Possibly if I manually create the .con and .inf files I can still restore this copy.

Mike

*Solved*
 

Wow, double dumb-A$%#$%^s

I just realized that each date shown in Erdnt is not a hive but a directory and chaning into the dated directory was all that I was missing from the instructions.

Lars saved my butt! Worked like a charm.

Thanks Sami.

Mike