Laptop XP PC Will not boot- Even in safe mode

[Guest]

My sisters laptop (god knows what shes dopne to it but she's usually fine
with maintaining and caring for it, and only uses it for MSN andInternet),
but it just will not boot- sitting at a black screen then giving blue screen
error. Safe mode produces the same effect.

The blue screen says

STOP: C0000218 (Registry File Failure)
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\systemRoot\System32\config\software
or it's log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.

The this blinks up for half a second, then reboots:

Beginning dump of physical memory.
Physical memory dump complete.
Contyact your sys admin or tech support for assistance.

Usually I can solve most problems on my own but I'm at a loss here, without
safe mode. Is there I boot disc I could produce oir use somehow? The only
optin I could see is trying to run the system restore CD and wipe it- but I'm
sure she wouldnt be happy losing a lot of her files.

Thanks for your time and help.

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

Usually I can solve most problems on my own but I'm at a loss here, without
safe mode. Is there I boot disc I could produce oir use somehow? The only
optin I could see is trying to run the system restore CD and wipe it- but I'm
sure she wouldnt be happy losing a lot of her files.

She will be happier than she is now.

Sometimes those discs allow you to restore only the operating system,
leaving other elements intact.

 

[Rock]

My sisters laptop (god knows what shes dopne to it but she's usually fine
with maintaining and caring for it, and only uses it for MSN andInternet),
but it just will not boot- sitting at a black screen then giving blue
screen
error. Safe mode produces the same effect.

The blue screen says

STOP: C0000218 (Registry File Failure)
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\systemRoot\System32\config\software
or it's log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.

The this blinks up for half a second, then reboots:

Beginning dump of physical memory.
Physical memory dump complete.
Contyact your sys admin or tech support for assistance.

Usually I can solve most problems on my own but I'm at a loss here,
without
safe mode. Is there I boot disc I could produce oir use somehow? The only
optin I could see is trying to run the system restore CD and wipe it- but
I'm
sure she wouldnt be happy losing a lot of her files.

You can and should backup the files before attempting any fixes. Always
safeguard the data first. Then do some education on making sure there is
always a full and complete backup of important data. Using a drive imaging
program such as Acronis True Image to image the drive regularly to an
external hard drive is an excellent backup and recovery solution.

For now here are some ways to do the backup.

1. Take the drive out of the computer, install it in an external 2 1/2"
drive enclosure and connect that to the another XP or Windows 2000 computer.
It should read the drive ok, so you can copy the data. (You could then buy
another bare 2 1/2" drive, put it in this enclosure and use that for regular
backups as I suggested above).

2. Create a bootable Bart's PE disk, boot from that, then copy the data to
external USB drive or flash drive.

3. Download a bootable Linux distro called Knoppix. Create a bootable CD
from that, boot from it, and copy the data to USB drive or flash drive, or
if the computer has two CD drives, one of which is a burner, then use the
k3b burning program on the Knoppix CD to burn the data to CD.

4. Take it to a competent computer tech to backup the data.

Here is some info on that error.

http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm
0xC0000218: UNKNOWN_HARD_ERROR

It's a problem with the registry. It's possible she didn't do anything to
cause the problem. See these links:

"How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry That Prevents Windows XP from
Starting"
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=307545

How to Troubleshoot Registry Corruption Issues
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=822705