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While I was writing the previous post recommending Registry Mechanic from PC Tools as a way of fixing laptop boot problems I went to the PC Tools website to check the price.  I was surprised to find that it was £29.95 whereas I had paid $29.95 for my copy.

After some investigation I discovered that PC Tools had determined that I was in Britain from my IP address and was therefore quoting me the price in pounds rather than in dollars.  This would be ok but they don’t convert the dollar price to pounds at any normal exchange rate, they just change the currency code.  At current exchange rates PC Tools are charging British customers twice as much as they charge US customers.

Fortunately there is a way around this.  If you go through a proxy server like proxify then the PC tools website can’t tell from your IP address that you are in Britain and quotes you the US dollar price of $29.95 instead.

I am happy to pay a fair price for software but I see no reason why I should pay twice as much just because I live in the UK.

I have an elderly Dell Inspiron 2500 Laptop running Windows XP, just about every time I apply Windows Updates I get boot problems. The laptop will partially boot but won’t get as far as the Windows logon screen. If I switch it off again and restart it sometimes fixes itself, but sometimes it doesn’t.

The problem seems to be caused by the Windows Update process updating the registry keys. Specifically HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\Setup I don’t know if this is the only key affected but it was the most recent one I found.

I have managed to solve this problem by using Registry Mechanic from PC Tools Software to scan the Registry and then fix any errors it finds. You could do the same thing by using Regedit to edit the registry but Registry Mechanic is pretty reliable and seems to do the job for me.

I have now got into the habit of running Registry Mechanic after any Windows Update download. Sometimes I have had to resort to booting Windows in Safe mode to run Registry Mechanic but things have always come right after Registry Mechanic has worked its magic.

At the time of writing (June 2008) Registry Mechanic costs $29.95 and is available for a free trial download. If you are having the same problems as I have then it is worth the money.

There are other products which would do the same job just as well but Registry Mechanic is the one that I found when I initially discovered this problem and it has served me well since (but see the next post to avoid being ripped off by PC Tools).