Corrupted Registry

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi Guys and Gals,
I need to pick your brains regarding Windows XP. My friend booted his pc up, it runs the post test ok, but on loading windows he gets the following error message
Stop : c0000218 {Registry File Failure}. The Registry cannot load the hive (file) : \System Root\System32\Config\Software or its log or alternate.
He went to the Microsoft Website to get help and it gave him a few options about how to recover. However he's running a OEM version of Win XP and it advises not to carry out most of these procedures on a OEM . Is there an easier way of fixing this and how did it become corrupt in the first place?

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Depends on what you mean by 'OEM' If he only has a 'recovery disk' then indeed some of the ways of fixing won't work.
If he has a normal XP disk - even if it has a manuf name on it then those ways should work.

Haas he tried the 'last known good' setting?

Harry.

 

since he has a OEM then why not try "repair reinstall" NOT recovery console... - but when setup detects another installation press 'R' and repair the installation... another program to try could be registry mechanic.... i had alot of success with it in the past..

 

Does the ' Last known good setting ' exist on the original Xp disc and have to be accessed on boot up with cd rom ?
It's not a recovery disc.

 

Reinstall the OS using the recovery disk the manufacturer supplied. Why/how did the registry get corrupted? At the risk of sounding flippant, it's Windows.

The machine might not have been shut down correctly. Someone may have tried to edit the registry and didn't do it correctly. Windows might have happened. Some software installer may have corrupted the registry. There's a fairly long list of things that could have happened. It's not a very rare occurrence for a Windows machine to have a corrupted registry.

 

No - F8 on boot IIRC

Harry.

 

I might have forgotten to mention that windows simply will not boot up and he gets the blue screen of death as well ......sometimes

 

F8 is before the boot really gets going

And what message is on the BSOD?

Sounds like a complete re-installation would be better.

Harry.

 

Cheers chaps, thanks for your help. Will pass on the info.
Also while we are talking software, is there a program out there that can show you how much power your pc is pulling, either as a whole or component by component?

 

Sometimes the evil Registry demons are just playing up. It could be that Steve Ballmer had a random number of Windows machines imprinted with this memory engrams so they would operate as a mirror image of his own personality. I kind of like that last one.

 

AFAIK no software can do that. But Maplins has a nifty little gadget that you plug an appliance into that measures the power used. Quite cheap too.

Harry.

 

What was the last thing he did to the machine before it started with the problems?

 

That's a teriffic computer tech question, nugget.
The number one question for a tech, in my opinion.

 

Yes and regardless of the answer given you tell them it is user error ....

 

Giles,

Just picked up on your thread. I have to say that a newk/install would be best from what you describe assuming they have no data they want you to recover that is? Oh, they do? That could be most of the battle.
As far as i am aware when i had a problem with a machine with an OEM (home) disc it was the full blown version.
If you have a "restore" disc then you might be snookered, unless you want to try third party utilities. The restore disc is just a "ghosted" image of how the machine left the builders.

Let us know how you get on.