XP Boot/Registry Problem... HELP Anyone

[infinitii]

Hello.

During the boot up of my PC today I was greeted with a very nice error message, this occured after the PC was shut

down the previous day without any problems.  The error message is as follows:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stop: C0000218 {Regisrty File Failure}

The regisrty cannot load the hive (file): Systemrootsystem32ConfigSoftware
or its log or alternate
It is corrupt, abscent or not readable

Begining dump of Physical Memory
Physical Memory Dump complete

Please contact Admin... blah blah
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sysytem:
XP Pro
Celeron 400
128 meg
Abit BX6
Seagate 6gig
creative Banshee 16meg
creative Awe32 s/card
(I know the cpu and ram are not ideal for XP but this machine is used primarily for business purposes - word, excel,

quickbooks and a few others - it works \"ok\" for what I need it for at the moment)

I have tried:
booting to safe mode
booting to safe mode: command prompt
booting to last good known configuration

None of the above did anything except produce the same error message.

I then tried to enter the Recovery Console.  Having never used this before I am a bit unsure of where to go from here.  

I have fond the \"software\" file mentioned in the error message path.  There is also a \"software.sav\" and \"software.log\".

I believe it is saying that the \"software\" file is corrupt.  Is the \"software.sav\" file a back up fo the software file?  Is it

possible to restore the .sav file? If so, how is this done?

Any help, ideas, suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.


<<--infinitii-->>

[rdc]

In the windows repair  folder , there is also a SOFTWARE file copy this one to windowssystem32config  ,this will  probably solve your problem

[rdc]

I recently had the same problem  , nothing helped , the only ways are
1.Use the original  xp disk and use \"r\" to repair (perhaps a repair disk helps too but I don\'t  have one so I cannot guarantee )
2.Use an image of your xp partition if you have one , and put it back .
Sometimes putting files of the config folder back helps but not allways .
I tried the recovery console too ,but  , you can only copy files from there or fixboot ot  fixmbr or  things that doesn\'t help in this case .

[rdc]

This is the ms way to resove the problem :
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;EN-US;q269075
I have printed out this web pages because , it\'s not the first time I  got this annoying problem

[Tracky110XP]

if you are getting the error message more then once i would look at the write cache on the hard drive. try to disable that.

also if you use ntbackkup to create an ERD with the registry backup as well then the backup is in the %systemroot%repairregback folder. and you will not need to reinstall all software or drivers on the system.

OR use the system state backup and just restore it when you are up and running.