"Improving" Windows can be hazardous to your PC...

Another of those "improvement" urges struck me yesterday, and I yielded to the temptation, and replaced one of the system files with a so-called 'improved' version that would theoretically give me better protection from possible invaders. And then, as they say, 'all Hell broke loose'.

At first, a Restart wouldn't even get past the point where the little 'Welcome' appears with its rotating spokes. It was stuck on that. I switched to Windows 7, also on this drive, and scanned for troubles. It didn't find anything, so that gave
me a clue - but now, how to undo what I'd done, when I can't get past the Welcome screen.

Reboot, get into the Boot Sector, and select the DVD Drive as first choice. Then put in the Recovery Disc I made the other day. Most of what it suggested didn't offer any real help, but when I removed that disc from the drive, suddenly I had an almost-normal-looking desktop. I managed to get into the folder in System32 where I'd made the changes earlier, and reverted those back to their original files, and then used Command Prompt in Admin mode to run these following instructions, which confirm everything's OK again. Huge sigh of relief!

  
And you can guess the moral here, can't you? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"