On Tue, 12 Sep 2006 05:47:02 -0700, bigdoubleya
Hi someone!
Got a problematic PC that I can't boot, it BSOD's complaining that the
SOFTWARE hive can't be loaded.
O..K.. that's tougher to fix on XP, but fixed it can be. The method's
geeky, so you may want to print it out and ask a tech to help - the
tech may be less likely to make mistakes, but may benefit from this
"how-to" as the method may not be that well-known.
Can't login to the recovery console, even though I'm certain that the
administrator password is fine, I aslo don't get the repair option when
booted on the CD, the install option warns me that there's another OS (WinXP)
installed.
Just as well - this is NOT a good situation to fix by re-installing
Windows, even the relatively innocuous "repair" form of this.
A repair install of Windows will re-assert the code files (though fall
back to unpatched status) and will generally try to respect your
settings, of which the SOFTWARE hive forms one large collection.
That's fine if your settings files are OK, but in this case, they are
not. SOFTWARE is one of the big registry hives, and contains most of
the settings required for all software on your system to work
properly. It's unique to your PC, so you really don't want the
re-installation process to replace it with an "empty" one.
So instead, what you want to do is find a recent backup of the hive,
and drop it into place. You will need a maintenance OS for that, and
you should do some preliminary work before you start.
Registy hives are vital, and normally well-protected by the OS. They
generally don't just get "lost" for no reason, even though frequent
access and settings updates put them at constant risk. So why did
this one get eaten? I'd check for bad hardware...
- overnight in memTest86
- check physical HD using HD Tune or similar from Bart CDR boot
MemTest86 is downloadable for free; you can make a boot CDR from
another PC, then set your PC to boot only off CD, and run the test
overnight. You do NOT want your at-risk HD to try to boot!
HD Tune is also free, but runs from Windows. You do NOT want to boot
the sick HD or run Windows on it, much less install software into it,
so once again you'd use another working PC to download it from
www.hdtune.com and integrate it into your maintenance OS.
Your maintenance OS would be built using Bart PE Builder on a working
PC that has the XP SP1 or later i386 file set available. Do a Google
for "Bart PE" and take it from there - to walk you through the whole
process would take too long to attempt here.
Once you have verified your RAM and HD are physically OK, you might
use ChkDsk to verify the file system. Ideally, you'd want a HD volume
other than C: to copy material from C: to, but most PCs are built as
doomed one-lungers, i.e. everything in one big NTFS C:
Unlike earlier and "inferior" Win9x, Windows XP makes no attempt to
maintain a set of registry backups automatically. Fortunately, it
does backup the registry hives as a side-effect of System Restore.
So if you've cleared your System Restore, then you are f^%$ed unless
you had your own ERUNT registry backup system up and running.
From Bart CDR boot, you will be able to harvest hive backup copies
from SR's data, which is held in the uber-hidden "System Volume
Information" subtree. Within this location will be a subtree named
uniquely for this installation, and within that will be a number of
Restore Point subtrees named RP273, RP274 etc.
In each of these RP* directories, will be a "snapshot" direcory, and
within this will be the backed-up hives. Copy each of the SOFTWARE
(no file name extension; *always* show extensions so you can see what
the hell is going on) hives you can find, and copy these off to
somewhere safe (outside of the SVI, which can get purged or FIFO'd
off, and preferably off C
. Maintain the file dates so you can pick
the latest - or fall back to older ones if the latest is broken!
Then, copy the latest of these back into where it lives, i.e.
System32\Config, and then try an F8 Safe Cmd boot off the HD.
The approach above will involve writes to the at-risk C:, so it's not
the very safest best practice. For example, if you had no System
Restore points to harvest from, your only chance may be to unerase an
old copy, and that will fail if you've overwritten it. However,
without SR to harvest, you'd probably be condemned to "just"
re-install Windows and all of your apps, as the on;y way to regenerate
the missing registry hive properly.
My question is, what determines whether the repair option is available? A
file, some files, what?
Both Recovery Console and installation CD Repair option require a
viable existing XP installation of similar version and SP level. When
one of the core registry hives is missing, this critrion is
invalidated, and these options will "grey out".
That is when you need a proper maintenance OS, but as at September
2006, you will not get this from MS. Fortunately, Bart has created
what all of MS's resources failed (or refused) to provide, and is
giving it away free. Hopefully MS will look, learn, and do the right
thing when Vista hits the streets.
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Drugs are usually safe. Inject? (Y/n)
