Anyone please help?!? Windows 98 2nd Edition Dell system, 46GB Drive
Went to open NERO 5.5.91 software recently (after running w/out error for 6 months) and was notified that there was a problem with initialization due to a registry error. Message told me to run "scanregw" program, click OK, and then reopen NERO. Unfortunately that didn't work...after reading up on similar problems by other NERO users, I attempted to uninstall/reinstall NERO (and remove all reference to NERO in the registry and on the computer prior to reinstallation). Didn't work. Downloaded NERO version 6, Roxio Easy CD Creator 5, and VCDEasy to see if those burning programs would work upon installation and the error messages listed below were provided for each before the install could complete...

NERO BURNING ROM 5.5.91 (and version 6)
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Error
Program: C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\RARSFX0\SETUP.EXE
abnormal program termination


ROXIO EASY CREATOR 5 PLATINUM
Error 1402.Could not open key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adaptec\Easy CD
Creator\5.0. Verify that you have sufficient access to
that key, or contact your support personnel.


VCDEasy v1.1.7
Error creating registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Delphi.Stuff
RegCreateKeyEx failed; code 1009.
The configuration registry database is corrupt.

So it appears that the registry is corrupt. I know that Windows 95 has a registry key size limit of 64K so I checked that and I'm sitting at 62K (I subsequently uninstalled some old programs to get that down to 53K but it didn't help). Another option I've seen is to restore the registry, however, I did not back up the registry until after this problem had occurred. I'm not sure what else to do, I'd rather not reinstall my operating system and lose everything.
COULD ANYONE PLEASE HELP IF THEY HAVE ANY IDEAS TO FIX THIS PROBLEM?!? Thanks in advance!!

UPDATE: Was able to boot from the WIN98 boot disk but only 5 backup registry files existed (all more recent than the onset of the registry problem about a week ago)...only one of them worked. However, I'm still having the same problems with installing/running the CD burning applications with the same registry errors reported above.