registry locked?

[mwdavis55]

Hi,

I'm hoping someone out there can help me with this.

I'm running Windows 98SE.

For some reason, my registry file System.dat appears to be "locked".

The file properties of System.dat are set to "Read only", and when I unckeck "read only" the property gets reset any time the registry is read. Needless to say, this prevents installing new software or editing the registry.

Installers quit with a failure to write to the registry, or, if they check for a writable registry quit saying that I need administrator priveledges.

This problem has only occurred recently, and I don't think I've installed anything that should be causing this behavior.

I'm using Norton system works for anti-virus, but I don't think that's causing the problem, since the problem is recent and the software has been runing for some time.

I hope I'm just being stupid, and there is an obvious cause of my problem that I'm overlooking.

If you need any other info about my system, let me know.

Thanks for any advice.

-W

[os2fan2]

Boot from a DOS disk, and reset the attribute of the registry from there. It should then clear the lock in Windows.