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April 29th, 2006 17:00

(Help!) The registry cannot load the hive file (Help!)

HELP! (Isn't that what everybody starts their thread with?) Have an inspiron 1000(wife's)

1 1/2 year old and now upon startup have screen that says

STOP:c0000218 Registry File Failure

The registry cannot load the Hive (File)

\systemroot\system32\config\software

or it's log or alternate.

It is corrupt , absent or not writable

Beginning Dump of physical memory

Physical memory dump complete

Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistance.

Wife claims she hit ALT CTRL DEL and removed Task Manager (why? I don't know!)

I ran an "OS will not boot" test from the F12 startup option

and came back with IDE Disk S/Ny4gi5644t Read and Verify Errors

Will not boot up in safe mode or any other options.

Is the HD bad, Do I have to do a total re-install, or repair?

Will I lose any existing data?

Any help would be appreciated.

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April 29th, 2006 18:00

Yes, the hard drive is faulty.

If there's data on the drive you need that isn't backed up start here:

Buy a notebook to desktop drive cable or an external USB 2.0/firewire 2.5" drive enclosure, attach the drive to a working desktop or notebook and copy your data for backup.

DO NOT PROCEED WITHOUT A BACKUP - DOING SO COULD BE FATAL TO YOUR DATA.

Return the drive to the notebook. Boot, press F12 and run the extended diagnostics on the drive. If the drive passes, skip the next step.

If the drive fails and you're under warranty, call Dell, report the error and they'll ship you a new drive.

If the drive fails and you're out of warranty, bin it and replace it - any notebook 2.5" drive will work.

If the drive passes, you can continue to try a repair (which fails more often than it succeeds) or bite the bullet and reinstall everything from scratch.

Recovery usually fails to restore the registry; in about 70-80% of all cases, it's a hardware fault that causes the problem.

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June 9th, 2006 03:00

Mmmm, it sounds very much like an Inspiron 1000 that I just brought back to life: BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death), doesn't run in any Safe Mode, HDD diagnostics checks OK.

Here are the steps I used to recover a client's laptop, running XP SP1.

*** PLAN A ***
It sounds like you haven't tried to to a Recovery from a XP disk yet. If you have not and you are running XP:
1) Get a Microsoft XP CD (or the Dell XP that should have come with the laptop)
2) Reboot, press F12, choose CD, press any key when asked to do so.
3) When the menu choice includes "go to Recovery Console", just continue to the next menu, which should give you a choice that includes "R for repair installation".
4) Press R and the CD will try to rebuild your OS without losing your data and settings.

If the CD does not give you the choice to repair your installation, it's time for Plan B

*** PLAN B ***
1) Follow steps 1 & 2 of Plan A
2) When asked, select "Go to Recovery Console", to get the command prompt.
3) Type the command "CHKDSK /R". This checks and repairs the registry.
4) Do lunch. (This took over an hour for it to complete on my laptop.)
5) Exit out of the Recovey Console.
6) Restart the computer

If all works well, your computer should now boot into Windows correctly.

Message Edited by CopB8 on 06-08-200611:24 PM

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