change startup items without OS access

[wegtet]

accidentally installed Daemon Tools with SPTD emulation enabled on Win7 running under VirtualBox. RDP and Virtualbox are so seamless that I guess I thought I was on a regular desktop without builtin image mounting support.
Can't boot into Windows (well, I get to the desktop and it restarts). Safemode does same thing.

I mounted the .vdi image on another VM and deleted the Daemon Tools folder, which solved the problem, but that only worked because I knew which files were the problem.

For future reference/my own curiosity:
Is there any way to modify the startup items by editing files? I have total access to the system files, just like if I were booting via LiveCD. Is it possible to edit the registry? Editing the registry from outside of Windows would be really useful imo.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Sure. This tutorial. Might need to do it virtually (i.e. an Iso file booted in a Virtualbox VM with the virtual disk connected)
instead of "regedit" you can type "msconfig" to get the usual panel to configure startup.

Or whatever. That's command line.

Also the system restore from that panel could help too.