System.ini not found. 1

[whiteshepherd]

A friend installed MGI Photosuite 4 on his Time computer running WinME without uninstalling a pre-installed (by Time) copy of Photosuite 8.05 for Win95. I attempted to uninstall 8.05 using add remove programs and received a message that it already appeared to have been uninstalled, however a check in Explorer ascertained that all the files were still in place.
When the computer was restarted WinME startup screen briefly appeared followed by a black screen with the message "System.ini not found, insert bootdisk and type SCANREG /RESTORE".
Using a startup disk (unidentified) I managed to access the C:\ drive, but typing SCANREG /RESTORE at the prompt produced bad command. Should I be looking in a different directory to use this command?
Any assistance would be appreciated.

 

[mattjurado]

Scanreg is typically found in the c:\windows folder, not 100% sure its available in ME, but try it out...

c:\windows\scanreg.exe /restore

If no go, can you boot to safe mode? If so, try the system restore utility in start>programs>accessories>system tools

Rollback to a previous date, and see how it goes.

Matt J.

 

[whiteshepherd]

Many thanks for the prompt reply. I will try suggestions tomorrow and report back.

 

[wolluf]

You should use an ME boot disk (rather than unidentified!)

Get one from

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm.

 

[wolluf]

PS - scanreg lives in C:\Windows\Command folder on the hard drive.

 

[whiteshepherd]

Yes, I did find that I needed to get an ME startup disk from Bootdisk.com.
I managed to find one with Scanreg.exe, so was able to run it from the floppy and restore the registry to an earlier date.
It would seem that the ancient copy of Photosuite with the dodgy uninstall routine has damaged more than the registry as I am still getting a missing system file message (Infsthlp.sys or similar). I have now come to the conclusion that a re-install of WinME is probably the best bet.
Many thanks for the help and advice.

 

[diogenes10]

whitesheperd
I use win98 rather than ME, so not sure how my concepts carry over, but--
My experience has been that it is not uncommon for a products uninstaller not to completely remove a product.
You have to look no further than McAfee or Norton antivirus sites to find examples of this. Both of those companies have manual removal instructions on their sites. I have followed the general concepts presented in those instructions to remove McAfee, Norton/Symantec, Lotus, HP, and Adobe products when I have created conflicts with one too many experiments.

In the 98/98se world, before I did a complete operating system reinstall, I would try a "complete" product removal.

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,101782,00.asp

This link provides the general concepts. I have used JV16 power tools instead of regedit. The big trick in removing both files and registry items is to be able to come up with all the product names/company names the installer made entries under. I would then run the win98 system file checker and let it fix the missing files it finds (dont know what the me equivalent of this is). Hopefully at that point, I then have my system operation without having had to completely reinstall operating system and applications.

 

[SkipCox]

MGI's website has a lot of help concerning uninstalling and installing photosuite products. I can be a bear sometimes.

Skip

http://scc.i8.com

 

[whiteshepherd]

I wasn't able to complete this job as my friend decided to take the machine to his local computer shop.

My gain here is finding Tek-Tips. Excellent help available which is much appreciated.

 

[wawadave]

hello skipcox how are you? funny runing into you here!