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Saved By ERUNT


greenknight

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ERUNT saved the day for me yesterday, I was able to restore the registry and fix Windows XP when it would only boot to a black screen. Any Windows NT/2000/2003/XP/Vista user who isn't running this great little registry backup/restore utility, I'm telling you - you really should get it.

As for Dr. Web CureIT - it's a handy stand-alone AV scanner, but if it's going to wreak this kind of havoc it's not worth using. I sent feedback to the vendor, to see if they have an explanation - and it better be a good one!

What happened was - I downloaded the latest CureIT (the only way to update it), set it to run at low priority (it has a slider for this), and selected an "Express" scan (a full scan takes forever). The plan was to let it run in the background while I played some FreeCol, but when I pressed Scan, BOOM, the computer rebooted. It seemed to be booting normally, but after the Windows screen was just black - no desktop, no cursor, no response to anything.

Punched the reset button, then I got the screen that informs you that it failed to boot up normally (uhhuh, I knew that already), and gives the options to boot normally, to the last good configuration, or to safe mode. I tried each one, the first two got black screen, trying to boot to safe mode stuck on the last text screen.

Then I tried booting up my Knoppix disc (which worked just fine, played a little Galaga - did very badly), then tried my Drive Fitness Test disc (the hard drive is fine). Didn't seem to be any hardware problem, not that I ever really doubted what the culprit was. Contemplating my next move (Repair install? Could I do something from the Recovery Console?), I pulled out the printouts I'd made of info on the Recovery Console. There, right on top, were the instructions for restoring the registry from the the ERUNT Autobackup daily backups - I could restore the registry from the Recovery Console! So I did, and it worked - booted up like nothing had ever happened.

I just had to be sure, though - did launching that scan really cause the crash, or was it a coincidence? So I tried launching that scan again - and then I had to restore the registry again (much faster with practice). After that I deleted Dr. Web CureIT, and I'm not planning on downloading it again.

Everything seemed ok, but on general principals I ran a disk check, then ran Dial-a-fix and an SFC purge/scan. Had to reinstall the old HP ScanJet, as the OS couldn't see it anymore; if there's any other damage, I haven't found it yet. Altogether it was a big pain, but it would have been a much bigger one without ERUNT - it's a must-have for Windows users, I can't recommend it too highly. You can download it here: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

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Yes , I am. I suppose I might have got the scanner working again by doing a system restore. The last time I tried to do a system restore, however, it failed. System restore couldn't help with the original problem anyway, since I couldn't get to it; and after I'd already restored the registry and gotten almost everything working, I didn't want to mess with it.

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Had a long exchange of messages with Dr. Web Technical Support, they kept asking for more info and scan logs. At first they said it was probably a virus; but now, if I understand them correctly, they think it's a conflict with the Avast self protection.

They just released a new version of CureIT, must be a new feature. :P

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm continuing to converse with Dr. Web Technical Support; they apparently are having a hard time fixing this, and keep asking for more info.

I have verified that Dr. Web CureIT will run without causing a crash if the avast! self protection module is disabled. Looks like they identified the problem correctly.

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