"The registry cannot load hive file... It is corrupt, absent, or not writeable."

[JamesDillon]

"The registry cannot load hive file... It is corrupt, absent, or not writeable."

I'm having a problem with my laptop that first arose in Vegas, but continues to persist now that I'm home. When I try to start the computer, it goes to the Windows load screen, but rather than loading Windows, I get a blue screen that says

The registry cannot load the hive file: SystemRoot/System32/config/SOFTWARE or its log or alternate. It is corrupt, absent, or not writeable. Beginning dump of physical memory. Physical memory dump complete. Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistance.

The computer then reboots itself, only to go through the same process, culminating in the same blue screen, over and over. I have tried opening Windows normally and in Safe Mode, but neither works.

Even as a computer science dropout, I get the sense that this is really, really bad. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions that anyone might have as to how I might, at least, retrieve my data before wiping the hard drive.

Thanks,
James

 

[jeremyp]

Try doing a repair install from your Windows distribution disk

 

[MortFurd]

Try doing a repair install from your Windows distribution disk

Don't bother.

That particular message means your registry is toast.

Here's what Microsoft has on the subject.

 

[Jekyll]

Even as a computer science dropout, I get the sense that this is really, really bad. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions that anyone might have as to how I might, at least, retrieve my data before wiping the hard drive.

If you want to get all of your data nice and safe before you try and fix the machine, get hold of a ubuntu or knopix installation disk. It will boot you into a nice gui where you can copy all of your data to somewhere safe.

There's a walk through here:
http://lifehacker.com/software/disk-recovery/geek-to-live--rescue-files-with-a-boot-cd-192982.php

 

[voidx]

Don't bother.

That particular message means your registry is toast.

Here's what Microsoft has on the subject.

For the record, I have gone through the manual process described in this KB article on a Windows XP machine I had on a client site, and it did successfully recover the registry.

It's a little involved, but its worth trying first.

 

[Soapy Sam]

I don't suppose you backed up the reistry recently at all?

(You may have done so before installing new software without realising it. That version may predate whatever happened to screw the active version).

God knows how you would get at it though.

 

[JamesDillon]

Thanks, all. For reasons I don't fully understand, shortly after posting this I was able to load Windows, and the first thing I did was back up my hard drive online. I haven't done it yet, but as soon as I have a free moment I plan to wipe the drive and reinstall windows, which I assume should fix the problem.