System hive too big

T

Thomas Charles

Hi,
What is the permanent fix for
"Windows Could Not Start Because the Following File Is Missing or
Corrupt: \Winnt\System32\Config\System"
error

I followed the instructions in
269075 article to copy my default system file

That enabled me to boot up but each time I shutdown and reboot I get
the same message.
So the question is what is the permanent fix?

I tried the other instructions on the same page, all the stuff about
backing up SHARES.NEW and SHARES.OLD etc.
But some of the steps weren't too clear. For example

6. On the Registry menu, click Load Hive.
7. In the list of files, click the System.old file, and then click
Open

Which System.old file is he referring to?

The one that I backed up when I did the initial fix for the problem?
Because when you click "Load Hive" the directory dialogue box that is
displayed is not C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG and so doesn't have this
file in the list
I went ahead and CD'ed to C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG and clicked on the
system.old I had created.

Also, the last two steps didn't make sense
....
19. At the command prompt, type the following lines, pressing ENTER
after you type each line:

ren system system.org
ren system.old system
20. At the command prompt, type exit, and then press ENTER to restart
the compute
....

At the command prompt the directory is C:\WINNT and there is no file
called system, only a directory
When I went into C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG and typed in these commands
and rebooted, I still got the same error so I had to recopy the system
file from C:\WINNT\REPAIR

If anyone can provide me with a permanent fix I'd appreciate it

I tried creating a recovery disk and then restoring from the RegBack
directory as suggested in the same article, to no avail.
 
T

Thomas Charles

Crouchie1998 said:
Crouchie,
Thanks for that pointer, alas I am now worse off than before! Tip no1
in that article is what I had done the first couple of times.

I followed tip no 3 in that article to reduce the size of the hive by
double copying the SYSTEM file.
That didn't show any visible size reduction, but I went ahead and
typed EXIT and ENTER and on rebooting it came back with the SYSTEM
FILE CORRUPT OR MISSING message.

So I did what had worked earlier as a temporary fix, ie booted with
CD, went to recovery console, backed up SYSTEM and SYSTEM.ALT, copied
SYSTEM file from WINNT\REPAIR.

This had worked fine earlier but this option also now fails me.
Basically I am up the creek...
 
M

Mark Wilson [MSFT]

Hi pakku,

Do you have a system.old in your C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG folder? If so
this is your original hive, & the one that is being referred to in step 7
of KB269075.

In step 19 you should be booted to the Recovery Console where you then
rename the current system hive in C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG (the one you
took out of C:\WINNT\REPAIR to get the machine to boot), this way it's out
of the way so you can rename your "fixed" system.old back to system.

Do you still have your system.old file (he original file that was causing
the error)?

If you do you can try using chkreg.exe to repair & compress the file, here
is the link to download the utility.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=56D3C201-2C68-4DE8-
9229-CA494362419C&displaylang=en

You would want to both:
chkreg /f system.old /r
chkreg /f system.old /c

Then from within the Recover Console you can move system.old back to
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG and rename it back to system.

Cheers,

Mark R. Wilson, MCSA/MCSE
Enterprise Platform Support
Server Setup

Search our Knowledge Base at http://support.microsoft.com/directory

Visit the Windows 2000 Homepage at

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/default.asp

See the Windows NT Homepage at http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/



NOTE: Please reply to the newsgroup and not directly to me. This allows

others to add to and benefit from these threads and also helps to ensure a

more timely response. Thank you!



This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
T

Thomas Charles

Hi pakku,

Do you have a system.old in your C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG folder? If so
this is your original hive, & the one that is being referred to in step 7
of KB269075.

In step 19 you should be booted to the Recovery Console where you then
rename the current system hive in C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG (the one you
took out of C:\WINNT\REPAIR to get the machine to boot), this way it's out
of the way so you can rename your "fixed" system.old back to system.

Do you still have your system.old file (he original file that was causing
the error)?

If you do you can try using chkreg.exe to repair & compress the file, here
is the link to download the utility.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=56D3C201-2C68-4DE8-
9229-CA494362419C&displaylang=en

You would want to both:
chkreg /f system.old /r
chkreg /f system.old /c

Then from within the Recover Console you can move system.old back to
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG and rename it back to system.

Cheers,

Mark R. Wilson, MCSA/MCSE
Enterprise Platform Support
Server Setup
Mark,

Thanks for a very detailed reply.

I finally gave up and reinstalled Win2K- I could afford to do that
since I use this box mostly for browsing and don't have much data or
anything.

But my big question is "How to prevent a recurrence?" In
System/Properties/Advanced/Virtual Memory my registry quota is set to
30 MB currently.

I went thru the exercise of making the 6 floppies and starting up from
the floppy drive. After a couple of floppy-read mishaps I got to disk
6 and did the registry fix thing.
It came back in a jiffy and said registry repaired but when I
rebooted, I got the same error message about missing or corrupt
SYSTEM.

So I booted back into recovery console using the Win2K CD and tried to
run chkreg but it just wouldn't let me. It said it was an
unrecognized command.
I am pretty sure I typed it right.
I first tried it from the floppy as in
a:chkreg etc... and when that didn't work, I copied chkreg.exe from
the 6th floppy to c:\winnt\system32\config and then ran it as you
suggested.
Got the same "Unrecognized command..." message.

Which is when I gave up :)
 
M

Mark Wilson [MSFT]

Pakku,

It is not uncommon to find an application as the cause when your registry
capacity is depleted. You can use this tool to monitor and catch the
culprit if this is the case.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/existing/dureg-o.
asp

However, I do not see in your posts that registry size was you problem,
maybe you determined that off-line (based on file size of your system.old).
You registry may have simply become corrupt. Read the "Cause" section of
the first article you found, KB269075.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=269075

I'm glad you are back up and running now, but since you did have this issue
monitoring your registry hive would not be a bad idea.

Best Regards,

Mark R. Wilson, MCSA/MCSE
Enterprise Platform Support
Server Setup

Search our Knowledge Base at http://support.microsoft.com/directory

Visit the Windows 2000 Homepage at

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/default.asp

See the Windows NT Homepage at http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/



NOTE: Please reply to the newsgroup and not directly to me. This allows

others to add to and benefit from these threads and also helps to ensure a

more timely response. Thank you!



This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
T

Thomas Charles

Pakku,

It is not uncommon to find an application as the cause when your registry
capacity is depleted. You can use this tool to monitor and catch the
culprit if this is the case.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/existing/dureg-o.
asp

However, I do not see in your posts that registry size was you problem,
maybe you determined that off-line (based on file size of your system.old).
You registry may have simply become corrupt. Read the "Cause" section of
the first article you found, KB269075.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=269075

I'm glad you are back up and running now, but since you did have this issue
monitoring your registry hive would not be a bad idea.

Best Regards,

Mark R. Wilson, MCSA/MCSE
Enterprise Platform Support
Server Setup

Search our Knowledge Base at http://support.microsoft.com/directory

Visit the Windows 2000 Homepage at

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/default.asp

See the Windows NT Homepage at http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/



NOTE: Please reply to the newsgroup and not directly to me. This allows

others to add to and benefit from these threads and also helps to ensure a

more timely response. Thank you!



This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Mark,
THanks again. I downloaded that utility and ran it using the /a
option and these are the numbers
D:\Program Files\Resource Kit>dureg.exe /a
Size of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT : 4829656
Size of HKEY_USERS : 541747
Size of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE : 10358921

Total Registry data size: 15730324

I don't know if this is good bad or ugly! When I compare the sizes of
the SYSTEM and SOFTWARE files between the REPAIR and CONFIG
directories the values are
09/11/2004 08:10p 5,844,992 software
09/11/2004 08:10p 909,312 system

and
09/20/2004 10:39p 9,969,664 software
09/20/2004 01:53p 2,465,792 system

I did install a bunch of programs after I reinstalled Win2K like Real
Player and Opera and so on.

Are there any tips to prevent corruption of the hive?
Is there a concept in Win2K like in WinXP of creating a system image
that I can roll back to later?
In Win98 there is a SCANREG /R option that does something similar-
does it exist in Win2K?

Sorry for all the questions- if you want to point me to some article I
will be happy to read and try to understand

Regards
 

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