Accidental Registry-Permission Loss

[Joe_143]

I am running windows Vista 32 Bit, and after runnning CCleaner and deleting many "Zonemap" items that seemed obviously to be viruses I restarted the computer and when I logged back in to my Admin account I do not have permission to use 99% of anything (I can use Paint and open folders). Error: "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permission to access the item" error appears when trying to access 99% of anything. When I try to use the registry backup created the PC will not allow me to. However on other accounts I can access everything that is not part of the administrator, and including the System Restore- but I only want to use that as a last resort. Also one last thing ia qhwn I tried to enable the permissions of the admin with the non-admin account I could not do so. Thank you for any help.

 

[Saga Lout]

With a bit of luck, you might be able to use System Restore to go back in time. Don't try the GUI route to SR, go into c:\windows\system32 and scroll to the file cmd.exe. Right click it and select RunAs Administrator and in the Command form that shows up, at the Prompt type
rstrui.exe
then hit the Enter key. Go back to the latest Restore Point before the day you broke the Registry.

CCleaner is a good utility and has never broken a Registry in the several thousand times I've used it on my customers' systems but it's always best to back up the Registry before making any changes to it. File>Export does that for you.

 

[Joe_143]

I ended up doing that, thank you for your help!