W2K will not Startup

[WJWheels]

All was working well. I shut down my Win2k machine last night normally, but when starting up this morning the following occurs:

It starts to boot; I get the windows splash screen and the blue progress marker goes all the way to the right. Then the following error pops up on a black (clear) screen:

STOP: c0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the Hive (file): \Systemroot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate. It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.

The PC then restarts and the process repeats itself.

This PC is dual-boot (W2k / W98) and I can start W98 normally.

Any help is appreciated..... TIA

[Hpro]

try to boot to RECOVERY console and there run CHKDSK /P this will invoke to run recovery on destroyed or corrupted system files..
If this doesn't help then boot of the cdrom to Setup of windows select reapir mode using R twice then select manual repair - and there select the second choice - et it do it and then restart - if it still doens't work then post back
Hpro

[WJWheels]

Thx Chris... I'll try that. I've got an ERD and also found some stuff on the MSKB about restoring the SOFTWARE registry hive.

I'll let you know how I come out. As last resort, I do have a Drive Image backup of the System Partition that's about a week old. Too bad the partition is NTFS or I could probably just copy the registry hive files from another pc.

[Hpro]

Yes you can - it's only the log file isn't it? the all you have to do is to boot to recovery console - and then copy the file it asks for to a floppy or somehwere else onto a drive - or just insert the drive which is working boot it up using the CDROM into recover and copy the file over to the drive which doesn't start anymore -

ONE thing I thought you might check out first - use Win98 either startup disk or if you have win98 as dual boot and CHECK RAM - it has happen to me that because of ram the machine would produce some strange errors - also disable L2 cache on the next boot in the bios - and look what comes out..
Hth
Hpro

[WJWheels]

The software.log file in both pcs (working & non-working) is a mere 1024 bytes. The SOFTWARE hive however is vastly different in the machines - 10mb in the working pc and 16+ mb in the non-working. How could it work to replace 1 with the other?

Disabling the L2 cache in bios did not seem to do anything. How do I CHECK RAM?

[Hpro]

You will need a Win98 boot disk into safe mode if it passes then ram is oK - there is a software backup - for it in c:\winnt\win32\config
it's SOFTWARE.SAV - did youtried CHKDSK /p form the recovery console ?

[WJWheels]

I booted from a win98 boot disk - chose F5 to boot to safe mode. It went straight to an A. prompt.

What is software.sav? It too is vastly different size in the 2 computers. How do I replace SOFTWARE with software.save. There is no extension on SOFTWARE.

Yes I tried CHKDSK /p. It went through to 100% and reported finding and fixing 1 or more errors. It made no difference in startup however.