Registry failure

[Cooler Dude]

I have an old Sony Vaio laptop running XP which has an error
message on boot:- "The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate. It
is corrupt, absent or not writable" followed by memory a dump.

Safe Mode (with or without Command Prompt, etc.) & Last known
good configuration boot-up options produce exactly the same error
message.

I suspect things may well be beyond repair but I would like to try
and rescue some data if possible before doing a complete
re-installation.

I was hoping to run the Recovery Console from an XP setup CD (just
in case a CHKDSK might cure things) but the "Repair" option will
not proceed without the Administrator password, which I do not
know (and no, it's not blank).

I have NTAccess (with which I had hoped to be able to see the
Administrator password but this laptop has no floppy drive and
Windows Setup is not seeing the USB floppy drive I tried.

Any useful suggestions would be very welcome.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

How to edit the registry offline using BartPE boot CD:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/peboot.htm

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Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Mark.Ferguson

 

[Cooler Dude]

Thank you Mark. I shall give that a try.

How to edit the registry offline using BartPE boot CD:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/peboot.htm