>I went to visit a client yesterday and somehow the registry of one of the users' machines was completely blown (windows was in the same state it is when just installed)... 640x480, no network drivers whatsoever, no registry entries for any of the software in the computer (all office apps work except Access that complains about no license in machine), in a nutshell, nothing.
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>Questions:
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>1. How could this happen? (User of course insists she did nothing. I'm suspecting she tried to install a new screensaver.)

Alex, the user have received a "Windows has encountered an error accesing registry". She's been forced to restart the computer then the OS have done a restore from backup.

Usually, this behaviour appears when RAM is deffective. Try changing it.
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>2. Is there any tool that will allow me to take a snapshot of the WHOLE system after I set it up again in order to reset system to a working configuration in case this happens again? I remember a HW solution that did this, but is there anything that's SW based (preferably free)?
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Probably the gurus will be horripiled about what I'll say, but in my system this solution have always worked:

After installing the OS and all the rest (I have to mention that I never install Office and Visual Studio in Program Files directory - I install them in C:\Microsoft Office and C:\Microsoft Visual Studio), I simply copy the Windows and Program Files directories in other location in HDD.

If OS is trashed, I copy them back. This solution works under Win95, Win95OSR2, Windows98 and WinMe. I've tested.

But I really think that the problem will reappear, because RAM is deffective.


Hope this helps.