All icons get error "Problem with shortcut"

**sethfp** · August 31st, 2004, 02:29 AM

Am using win98se. Tried to do regedit, ended up with a screwed up registry. Now every icon that is clicked on gets the error "Problem with shortcut. The item that this shortcut refers to has been changed or moved."

Have heard of doing a system restore from cabs, but don't know how to do it.

**tobevers** · August 31st, 2004, 03:19 AM

restart the computer and start pressing F8 to get DOS start menu. one of the options is boot to command prompt...highlight it and press enter. At the command prompt, type: scanreg /restore. You will then get a list of times that windows saved a copy of the registry. Choose one with the most recent date. Windows will give a message that it is restoring your registry and will then reboot with the restored registry.

**sethfp** · August 31st, 2004, 03:43 AM

Originally Posted by tobevers

restart the computer and start pressing F8 to get DOS start menu. one of the options is boot to command prompt...highlight it and press enter. At the command prompt, type: scanreg /restore. You will then get a list of times that windows saved a copy of the registry. Choose one with the most recent date. Windows will give a message that it is restoring your registry and will then reboot with the restored registry.

Tried scanreg /restore--didn"t work.

**sethfp** · August 31st, 2004, 10:32 PM

Originally Posted by sethfp

Am using win98se. Tried to do regedit, ended up with a screwed up registry. Now every icon that is clicked on gets the error "Problem with shortcut. The item that this shortcut refers to has been changed or moved."

Have heard of doing a system restore from cabs, but don't know how to do it.

How can you do a system restore from cabs?

**tobevers** · August 31st, 2004, 11:51 PM

Sorry, bud. I have never seen a way to do a system restore from cab files in Win98 and I couldn't find any info on it. You could try and PM NooNoo and see if she has any suggestions. Noo seems to come up with the hard to find solutions no one else can find. If you have a computer made by a major manufacturer (like Dell, HP, etc...) then chances are the cab files have all been loaded into a folder on the system so that you don't have to insert the OS cd to remove/install OS apps. It is usually placed in C:\windows\options\cabs. If this folder is there, you may find setup.exe. Double-clicking on this will rerun setup and you may end up having to reinstall some programs after rerunning setup, but at least you'd repair your registry and be able to run OS-specific apps.
There are a few other things you can try here. Scroll all the way to the bottom to Restore Damaged Registry.
In the future, if you want to mess with the registry, back it up first. If anything goes wrong you can just restore the backup. The clickable link I listed above explains several different (and unconventional) ways to do this.
Wish I could be more help. Good luck...let us know how you come out.

**NooNoo** · September 2nd, 2004, 07:07 AM

very simple, you go into windows\options\cabs and find the setup.exe. double click it and setup will start. this is not system restore but an inplace install - which amounts to the same thing.

If all the cabs are there, it will work.