Corrupted environment / system variables

UK-Tim

UK-Tim

Hi People,

I seem to have accidentally corrupted my environment / system variables. (XP + SP3)

I was adding "SEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS=1" via the "System Properties" +"Advanced" + "Environment Variables" + "System Variables" dialog,
but I think there was a "hidden character" preceding the "SEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS" in the clipboard string.

Now any changes I make will be lost (to the dos environment) after a reboot, although they still show up in the dialog, and the "SEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS"
can't be seen in the dialog, but is always in the dos environment with a preceding white space character.


I tried using the "Rapid Environment Editor" tool, as well as searching and striping the registry of all occurrences "NOZONECHECKS" but nothingseems to work.

On reboot the dos prompt "SET" command always shows"zSEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS=1" with a preceding white space character where the 'z' is shown.

My gut feeling is that I need to edit "a file" with a hex editor and remove the offending non-printable character, but I don't know where "the file" is to be found.

Can anyone offer me any suggestions?
 
BellicoseBloke said:
System Restore Point... Maybe... Or are other things fubar? Perhaps a reformat to ensure freshness is sealed in...
Click to expand...
Hi,
I do have a recent backup, and restoring is my usual fix, but this time I thought I might try to get to the bottom of things and learn something new.
Or not of course :)
 
You could try setting a uniquely named variable and then searching for it in Regedit. Doing that shows me that User variables are stored in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment
and System variables are stored in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment
In there it'll be easy for you to click and delete or modify.
 
Have you searched the Windows directory for a file containing "NOZONECHECKS"?
@ImWolf I have now, the whole c drive, but still to no avail. I reckon the data is held in a binary format.

@cleverscreenname The registry does get updated after using the "System Variables" dialog, but always gets reset on a reboot to the corrupted value, and all entries after that no longer exist.

I've now decided to stop trying to correct the problem, and will just create a new installation, which was on the cards anyway as I'm upgrading the motherboard. I can see a way forward, but I don't think the effort will be worth it really.

It's not the first time I've come across this sort of problem. I got sold a locked Dell laptop, and I couldn't unlock it because someone had accidentally used a "space" character in the lock code, but in the end I got hold of a Dell in-house utility which cleared all security tags & passwords. And from there I was able to enter a new legitimate security tag. But if the hard-drive had also been encrypted, then all it's data would have been lost at the same time.
 
In that case, you can export the Environment folder to a .REG file, delete the folder (inside regedit), then edit the .REG file with Notepad and remove the corrupted entry, then merge the .REG file

By the way, it's possible to change the motherboard or HDC drivers on an existing installation and migrate to new hardware, without reinstallation. You might even get away with simply running Sysprep /generalize
 
After playing with the problem nearly all day on another PC with a clean installation, the problem appears to be a system security problem.
I would appear that some background process is blocking the very specific "SEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS" string from becoming an active
environment variable, it is blocked from the "autoexec.bat" and "User Variables" and "System Variables" after logging off or a system restart.
The only time it will become an "active" variable is directly after using the "Environment Variables Dialog" until the user logs off.
I'm sure there must be a way of turning off this behaviour, but I don't have any enthusiasm for trying to find out how it can be done.
So the upshot is there wasn't any string corruption, just an evil background process constantly undoing things after I logged off.
 
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