So my 9
year old Dell Inspiron 510m laptop running Windows XP Service Pack 2 crashed
last week with a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) message.
Stop: 0xc0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the
hive (file): \SystemRoot\System32\Config\System
or its log or alternate. It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.
Rebooting
in safe mode doesn’t work.
Rebooting
after running Full Diagnostics doesn’t work, the laptop is always stuck with
this failure.
The
Microsoft link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822705
is a good starting point but I tried many things to finally get it working, so
actually this article is also a Solution (rather a Workaround) for the
following other errors that you may face:
Windows XP
not accepting the Administrator password in Recovery Console
Windows XP
Setup stuck at License Agreement – F8 key not working
So the
sequence of events, trials and failures are as follows – these may help you in
the future.
Trial 1: Run the Recovery Console from the Windows
Setup CD to fix the system
If you have
the setup CD, then rather than formatting the whole drive, you could attempt a
recovery using the setup. In this way, you will still be left with your
settings and files intact.
Now when
you try this, you see a screen as below asking for the Administrator password.
But you don’t remember your Admin password – or like me you swear you never set an Admin password at all – so you leave it blank and press <Enter>.
You get a
message saying the password is invalid. This goes on for 3 attempts and then
you have to exit the recovery.
Some links
state that Dell laptops are preloaded with sysprep which requires you to set a
password on first usage, but it’s been so long I don’t remember doing that.
I also tried
rebooting with F2 into the BIOS and scrolling to the page on which quite
clearly it says
Administrator
Password: DISABLED
So I ENABLE
it and try setting one of those, save the settings and try the recovery again. And
again. And again.
It still doesn’t
work.
Trial 2: Attempt to recover the admin password
as part of a Repair of Windows from the Installation CD.
This link http://en.kioskea.net/faq/4716-xp-recovery-console-admin-password-forgotten
mentions a technique by which you can run the Setup and then choose Repair and
then get access to User Accounts in the Control Panel.
So only one
problem in this approach – while trying the Setup you reach this step.
When you get to the Welcome to Setup screen, press
ENTER to Setup Windows now
The Licensing Agreement will come next - Press F8 to
accept it
But when I
try to press F8, nothing happens. It just stays there. All other keys work such as PageUp,
PageDn and Esc to quit.
So the
things to try at this point are use Function key Fn + F8 together. Doesn’t work.
Try all
other F keys from F1 to F12, with and without Fn key. None of them work.
For good
measure, try Fn + 8 rather than F8. Nope.
Try almost
all other keys on the keyboard (except Esc). Try all of them with Shift, Ctrl or Alt. Try
all of them with NumLock on and off.
After all
of these fail – try plugging in an external USB keyboard. Many sites says the
PS/2 keyboard works, but of course this laptop does not have the PS/2 connector
port.
Try BIOS options to change the F8 key, didn’t see any such options.
Trial 3: Recover the data from the hard disk
first and overwrite the corrupted Hive files. [SOLUTION]
At this
point, I got myself an IDE adapter casing with a USB cable. I removed the Hard
drive from the laptop and was able to copy over all my data onto another PC.
That led me
on to this link http://www.icompute.info/repair_windowssystem32configsystem.htm
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Now that I
had the original hard disk connected as an external hard drive (connected as G:\) , I went into an
earlier System Restore point using the cmd prompt.
From the snapshots
available on the disk, back up and then copy the software, system, sam,
security and default files over as per the Microsoft list at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
Note: G:\ is the original laptop hard drive now connected via USB
copy _registry_machine_software
g:\windows\system32\config\software
copy _REGISTRY_USER_.DEFAULT g:\windows\system32\config\default
copy _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SECURITY g:\windows\system32\config\security
copy _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM g:\windows\system32\config\system
copy _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SAM g:\windows\system32\config\sam
Once all the
copies were done, I fitted the drive back into the laptop and it booted up
normally.
