During the start up process for Windows 98 the message appears that ‘Windows encountered an error accessing the system registry. Windows will restart and repair the system registry for you’. After clicking OK, the start up process begins and Microsoft Registry Checker then advises ‘You have restored a good registry. Windows found an error in your system files and restored a recent backup of the files to fix the problem. Press enter to restart your computer’. Pressing enter begins the start up process again, without any error message. After this the PC and its software work fine, until startup the next day when the process repeats itself again. Should I put the computer into standby at the end of the day so I won’t get this problem again? How can this problem be rectified?

I have seen this problem before and remembered that Microsoft has articles in Microsoft Knowledge Base addressing this issue. One such article explains how the problem can be due to defective memory in your computer. This can be found at support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q186909. Another article in the Knowledge Base which does not exactly match your error but still may be of use is support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q193903. Windows will have already attempted to fix the registry using Scanreg.exe. You can read more about this utility at support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q183887). As Windows has already attempted to fix the registry, there is little point in doing this process manually using Scanreg.exe at the DOS command-line. However, it may be worthwhile to try to manually restore a past version of your registry as instructed at support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q221512. If you do wish to restore a past version of your registry, you should probably restore one which is labeled ‘Started’ so you are restoring a registry which has previously been used to start Windows. Also, be aware that recently installed programs and modifications to Windows may not function properly. For example, if you recently installed a piece of software, while this will still be on your hard drive after the registry is restored, it may not run since it will be missing all of its registry entries (because the registry you restored was backed up before the software was installed). In this case, you may need to reinstall the software.