Comments on: How to manually clean a registry?

Question: How to manually clean a registry?

amethysts — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 15:37:16 -0800

How hard is it to do a manual registry cleaning and is it worth paying HP $45 to help me?

i can't reinstall the linksys usb wireless adapter on my brother's HP desktop. First they told me to download a program to do a registry cleanup, which i did (Advanced System Optimizer). Since that didn't work, and the adapter works on my laptop fine, they said i need to go into the registry and take out the offending bits by hand, and that HP would walk me through it. I called HP and they said it'd cost $45 but I could barely understand what the lady was saying. I tried googling but it didn't really get me anywhere because i'm not really sure what i'm looking for. But i get the feeling that this is a common problem.

So here are my questions
- how hard is this? can i do it by myself? (I'm not technologically phobic but i don't have alot of knowledge, especially about computer guts) I forgot to ask Lynksys what exactly i'm looking for in there.
- is $45 a reasonable price for somebody to fix it for me?
- can anybody recommend a better service than HP tech support for this sort of thing? (i'm in suffolk county, ny)
- any other help you can think of

thank you!

By: gemmy

gemmy — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:24:22 -0800

You should be able to do the manual cleaning yourself, paying for a walkthrough seems excessive to me. Just make sure you make a backup before messing with the registry, that way you can restore it if you run into trouble.

Do you get an error message when trying to install the adapter? I found this guide - You Cannot Install Driver Files for Your Network Adapter and You Receive a "Cannot Install This Hardware" Error Message - that sounds applicable. It has a step-by-step walkthrough, similar to what HP support would likely have you do.

Again, make sure to back up the registry (it's part of the above instructions) before deleting anything.

By: amethysts

amethysts — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:43:29 -0800

Gemmy, thank you, that is the exact problem that i'm having. I just realized how vague my question was so i am kind of amazed that you found it.
I will print this out and go through all of the steps. I still sort of wish there were somebody trustworthy i could call and talk to (for free) but, this is still a huge help.

By: crypticgeek

crypticgeek — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:43:31 -0800

Why can't you reinstall? Why do you need to reinstall? Please be as descriptive as possible, I highly doubt this is a difficult thing to fix and someone can explain what you need to do so you don't have to pay $45 to listen to someone who you can't even understand in the first place.

By: crypticgeek

crypticgeek — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:44:54 -0800

Also, if gemmy's link doesn't do it for you and if you know a date when it was working correctly, you can try going back to a system restore point you know is good.

By: amethysts

amethysts — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:49:03 -0800

OK yeah, I need to reinstall because i was having some wireless network problems which i think sort of resolved themselves.. anyway, my laptop started cooperating again, but the HP didn't so i figured it might be the adapter. Also the adapter stopped showing up where it lists all of your network connections.

Usually whenever something just "stops working", i try to uninstall/reinstall and that usually either fixes it or points out a way to approach the problem.