Repeated problem with Win2K PRO - Please advise

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sat Aug 16, 2003 11:33 pm

I have gotten this error 4 times in a row in the past month. I had reinstalled Win2K PRO as a clean install and had taken a Ghost image of it right after the install.

I was using Win2K happily when suddenly one day when I rebooted, I got this blue screen error message :

STOP: C0000218 {Registry file failure)
The registry cannot locate the hive (file):
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE
or it's log or alternate.

It is corrupt, absent or not writable.

The system would not boot from that point on. I just took the Ghost image I had taken before and restored the system.

The system worked OK for a few days and again one day when I rebooted after uninstalling a new printer, I got the same error again. This routine has happened 4 times so far.

Can anyone here help me figuring out why this happens? Or how to prevent this from happening? Could this be the result of a virus or a trojan on my system?

Norm, Sid, TonyT, Anyone?

Sid · Post by **Sid** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 12:19 am

This is usually a problem with systems that are overclocked. Are you overclocking?

TonyT · Post by **TonyT** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 9:02 am

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... us;Q314874

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 9:04 am

Nope. No overclocking.

The only common denominator between the repeated crashes is the Ghost image, which I have been reusing to restore my OS every time I got the crash.

Do you think I should try reinstalling from scratch? It would take ages, which is the reason why I stick to ghost, but if it is ghost giving the problems then maybe I should scratch Ghost.

Also, I have noticed that this happens only after some uninstall of some random software. The last crash was due to the uninstall of a printer driver for a HP printer I was returning to the store.

BTW: Thanks for the link Tony. I am checking it out right now.

Brk · Post by **Brk** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 9:30 am

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operati ... ml#7489869

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 1:53 pm

My system is up and running now anyway thanks to Ghost, but I expect this to happen again soon. I have restored my OS 4 times so far. I wonder if this is due to a HD problem.

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sun Aug 24, 2003 4:58 pm

Happened again today.

It has to be Ghost that is causing this problem. I am going to just re-install W2k without Ghost.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Sun Aug 24, 2003 7:57 pm

Ugliest error you'll ever want to see on 2K and XP.

I've seen that happen several times on some clients computers. and even mine once the one time I used a brand new Maxtor HD I got for free (I should have known), even after reinstalling...it's happened again. HD failure. When the area where system32 directory lives...is starting to fail.

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sun Aug 24, 2003 9:06 pm

YOSC:

Is this a symptom of HD failure? I thought it was a faulty Ghost image.....

CableDude · Post by **CableDude** » Sun Aug 24, 2003 9:11 pm

I would run error checking on the drive to see what's up.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Mon Aug 25, 2003 6:45 am

Originally posted by neo960
YOSC:

Is this a symptom of HD failure? I thought it was a faulty Ghost image.....

In the several cases I've come across it (mostly clients, but also one case myself at home)....I've gone through the trouble of restoring the original HIVE as some of the link above may point to (the first HIVE that's backed up upon initial install), as well as done a reinstall. It's come back to bite me shortly afterwards (days up to weeks...it came back).

In my cases...new HD and a fresh install and all was well. In some cases, as the links above show..you may have bad RAM where the area of the RAM the registry happens to load into is bad.

Bad Ghost image? I doubt it. Ghost is good at checking, and....if you can boot up successfully at least once from that Ghost image...then I doubt it's a bad image. I've ghosted hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times...the only time I've seen a Ghost image go bad...wasn't a specific small problem within the image....like a few bad files, but it was the FAT that blew up a couple of times, which is why I always partition and format drives manually before Ghosting them now (even though Ghost is supposed to do that itself).

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Mon Aug 25, 2003 10:25 pm

Funny....I ran the Western Digital Diagnostics utility on the drive and found no errors.

Sid · Post by **Sid** » Mon Aug 25, 2003 10:51 pm

When I originally posted the part about OCed systems, I was referring to the memory not running at the oced speed. It could very well be bad memory.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 6:21 am

Originally posted by neo960
Funny....I ran the Western Digital Diagnostics utility on the drive and found no errors.

May well be memory in your case then...the couple of times I've come across this show stopping error...once I restored the original HIVE for the customer....the computer came back a month later with the same error. So the next time...tossed the Maxtor and gave her a new HD....haven't heard from her since.

Another time it happened to me, on my SBS2K server. Replaced the HD and reinstalled from scratch. Hadn't reared its head again.

The other time or two I've come across it, was a basic desktop where re-imaging a master clone image fixed it.

I just know it's an error that I don't like coming across. Even restoring the original HIVE is a pain in the butt, and requires reinstalling all your software because that original HIVE is a backup from the first boot of the machine, so the OS doesn't know about any software you've installed since then.

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 10:57 pm

YOSC,

You seem not to like Maxtor HDs. Are they really that bad? What brand of HD is good in your opinion?

PS: I had been eying the Maxtor 160GB hard drive which was on sale at staples for $109 to replace my potentially faulty western digital HD.

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Mon Sep 01, 2003 7:18 pm

Grrrr.....It happened again today.

So the only solution is to either replace the memory (or) replace the hard drive? Is Maxtor a good brand?

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 9:58 pm

Now when I try to reboot, I get the message from the initial BIOS/RAM check screen "RAM Error: Unable to R/W".

So the guy who built the PC for me has cheated me. The PC is still under warranty, but the store owner has sold his business and skipped town.

Can anyone give me any advice on how to shop for memory and what brand is supposed to be reliable and good and not too expensive? I have 1 Gig of RAM. Please help!

Edited to add: Since no one is answering this question here, I will open this issue as a new thread in the hardware section.

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sun Sep 14, 2003 7:54 pm

I guess this is still due to the bad memory, but I got a new error with win2k boot:

"Cant find WinNT\System32\Config\System. The file is unavailable or corrupted".

I booted into the Win98 boot and checked the directory. The system file and the system.alt file were there. I checked the system.log file and it had the word "Dirt..." in it:

-------
regf bGçÇ8Ã _ o n 1 \ W I N N T \ S Y S T E M 3 2 \ C O N F I G \ s y s t e m F L I B S Y S T E M \ R E G I S T R Y \ M A C H I N E \ C L O N E \ R E G I S T R Y \ U S E R \ R E G I S T R Y \ M A C H I N E \ S Y S T E M \ C U R R E N T C O N T R O L S E T \ S E R V I C E S \ E V E N T L O G \ R E G I S T R Y \ M A C H I N E \ S Y S T E M \ C U R R E N T C O N T R O L S E T \ C O N T R O L \ B O O T L O G \ R E G I S T R Y \ M A C H I N E \ S Y S T ïº…€DIRT
-----------

There was another log file in the same dir called userdiff.log and it also had the same string in it:

-----------
regf @2çÇ8Ã 1 \ W I N N T \ S Y S T E M 3 2 \ C O N F I G \ u s e r d i f f ßÌõ€DIRTÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
----------------

Maybe a virus? I have just ordered replacement memory from crucial. Hopefully this will fix the boot time bluescreen problems with Win2K.

ppanther68 · Post by **ppanther68** » Sun Sep 14, 2003 9:39 pm

have you tried restoring registry from the recovery console, also the MBR as well, Later

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sun Sep 14, 2003 10:30 pm

Originally posted by ppanther68
have you tried restoring registry from the recovery console, also the MBR as well, Later

Nope. I just restore the system from a Ghost image. It is good for a couple of reboots and then I get the blue screen again. Luckily I have most of the apps I need are installed in the ghost image and so I do not have to reinstall much of my stuff except for a few apps.

I have been restoring the system once every couple of days for the past month. It sucks.

Hopefully the new memory from crucial will alleviate this problem. If it doesn't then I do not know what to do.

ppanther68 · Post by **ppanther68** » Sun Sep 14, 2003 10:37 pm

Hello again,, sounds like it may be a hardware issue, I experienced problems with memory, the only thing about memory problems, is it usually causes different errors, makes it tougher to diagnose, if you have a spare, i would install it, just to see if your existing memory is really causing the problem, hope this helps,,,

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sun Sep 14, 2003 11:49 pm

Yup. I have ordered a new 512MB memory stick from Crucial today, as you saw in my post in the hardware section: https://www.speedguide.net/forums/ ... genumber=3

I hope it will fix this problem. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I will post my findings once I get the new memory.

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sun Sep 14, 2003 11:52 pm

Originally posted by ppanther68
have you tried restoring registry from the recovery console, also the MBR as well, Later

I will not be trying this now that I have ordered new memory, but just out of curiosity, can you give details on what is a recovery console, how to recover the registry from it, and how to restore the MBR? Keep in mind that Win2K is not bootable once the blue-screen errror happens.

Thanks.

CableDude · Post by **CableDude** » Mon Sep 15, 2003 6:55 pm

HOW TO: Install the Windows Recovery Console

ppanther68 · Post by **ppanther68** » Mon Sep 15, 2003 11:41 pm

Hello again,, when you install the recovery console it will give you two options, right after your post,, you can either run your Win 2000 Os, or the Recovery Console, when you get the prompt put in your admin. password if you have one, when you get to the command prompt type in help then enter, it will give you a list of commands you can use to repair or restore and diagnose various parts of your Os,, the rest can be found in Microsoft, as someone posted earlier from (CableDude) good luck,,,

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 8:42 pm

Originally posted by neo960
Yup. I have ordered a new 512MB memory stick from Crucial today, as you saw in my post in the hardware section: https://www.speedguide.net/forums/ ... genumber=3

I hope it will fix this problem. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I will post my findings once I get the new memory.

I finally managed to get the new memory module from Crucial.

I installed the new DIMM and restored the C: partition win2K PRO image from a ghost backup. I rebooted once and it booted OK. The second time I did a windows update and rebooted, and sure enough, I got the same Blue Screen of Death with the same message that "Registry Hive cannot be read as it is corrupted".

I wasted $100 on the crucial memory for nothing, but it is OK.

It cant be the Western Digital hard drive because I have run the western dig. diagnostics program on it and got no errors. What else can I try now? Please help!!!! I need to fix this problem so I can use the PC. Will replacing the motherboard help? Could it be just a bad ghost image?

koldchillah · Post by **koldchillah** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 8:59 pm

This isn't what you want to hear, but this is what I would do:

Basically, reduce your computer to the mere essentials and start from the ground up. Install the OS, and each app & piece of hardware within 2 or 3 reboots of each other so that when the error occurs, you can refer back to your last change and narrow down the possibilities that way.

I would say forget ghost for now, until you know you have a stable install and the problem is solved.

good luck.

SICMF · Post by **SICMF** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 9:38 pm

All this and you haven't tried a clean install? The Ghost image is most likely corrupted. If this problem has been repetitive. The first common denominator is the image. With the new Ram, Format the drive and do a clean install.

CableDude · Post by **CableDude** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 9:55 pm

Originally posted by koldchillah
I would say forget ghost for now, until you know you have a stable install and the problem is solved.

good luck.

Agreed.

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 11:34 pm

I am doing a clean install right now. I will post if this works out. If you see the beginning of this thread, you will see that most people advised that ghost may not be the problem.

I have started to notice some funky happenings in the other OS in my dual boot (win98). Sometimes it gives me a BSOD in which I cant see any english words. All control characters. It happened twice last week, but otherwise it has been stable. I have never had to reinstall it.

Sid · Post by **Sid** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:02 am

Any chance your using a promise controller?

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:07 am

Any chance your using a promise controller?

Hi Sid,

I don't know. What is it and how do I find out if I am using it or not?

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:38 am

Also I just remembered one more thing:

Over the past three weeks, I was getting this error message in the initial bootup screen when the PC boots up, where it checks the memory and reports the BIOS version, drives installed etc (just before the dual boot OS menu shows up):

"RAM R/W error. Press F4 to resume"

This was one of the reasons why I ordered the new crucial RAM.
So RAM was definitely an issue. The WIn2k Registry hive BSOD was probably unrelated.

Or maybe because the old RAM was bad, the ghost image created while the faulty RAM was in use may have been corrupt due to memory problems. Only unexplainable event is that it passes the ghost integrity check.

cyberskye · Post by **cyberskye** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:56 am

An integrity check does not check the image data against the original (at least not in my version of ghost), but verifies there is as much data as is advertised.

...it will tell you if a page from a book you have is missing, but it doesn't actually read the pages themselves, so there is no checking of the actual content of the image - whether the data makes sense; just that it exists and wasn't corrupted.

You *could* still have a bad image. You could also have a bad disk.

Ghost doesn't handle multi-boot systems well. It didn't work at all with a RH7.3 Linux - you had to reinstall the boot loader after building from the image.

EDIT: I would certainly try a fresh install before spending any more money on HW. Do you have a spare drive to try a fresh install? That would be my next step.

Skye

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 9:24 am

I did the fresh install last night, overwriting the previous installation in the C partition. I did not format the C: partition because I did not want to destroy the dual boot.

I will now try to install the apps and see if anything breaks.

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 10:45 am

I did the fresh install last night.

Today morning I did all the critical updates from the windows update site and rebooted. Worked OK.

Then I installed service pack 4 and rebooted. Worked OK.

Then I installed AVG antivirus and rebooted. Worked OK.

Then I installed IE6 SP1 and rebooted.

I got the blue screen error message again:

STOP: C0000218 {Registry file failure)
The registry cannot locate the hive (file):
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE
or it's log or alternate.

It is corrupt, absent or not writable.

What do I do now? Now we know it is not Ghost that was causing the problem. Could it be the Hard Drive or the Intel motherboard? Could this be a Virus?

Note: I installed NO OTHER APPS than the ones I mentioned above. Just a bare minimum installation of Win2K PRO with AVG and the windows updates, and the drivers for the motherboard and graphics card.

SICMF · Post by **SICMF** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 11:01 am

Why didn't you install SP4? Insteed of SP3?

SP4

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 11:17 am

Originally posted by Hybridmonolith
Why didn't you install SP4? Insteed of SP3?

SP4

Oops ..sorry it WAS SP4. Typo!

Sid · Post by **Sid** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:29 pm

A controller is to speed up the HD. Sometimes its built on the mother board and sometimes its a seperate card. Look in device manager and see if you see anything called "scsi" in there.

Also this could be a memory timing issue. Try setting the bios to either failsafe or default settings.

neo960 · Post by **neo960** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:56 pm

I checked the device manager and here is what I found:

Hard Disk Controllers:

Intel (R) 82801DB Ultra ATA storage Controller - 24CB
Primary IDE controller (Dual fifo)
Secondary IDE controller (Dual fifo)

BTW, this is my current configuration:
Intel Desktop Board D845EBG2;
Pentium4 2 GHz processor;
CT6464Z40B 512 GB Crucial DDR PC3200 • CL=3 • Unbuffered • Non-parity • 5ns • 2.5V • 64Meg x 64 ;
ATI Radeon 7000 32M DDR graphic card;
40GB WD Hard Drive;

Originally posted by Sid
Also this could be a memory timing issue. Try setting the bios to either failsafe or default settings.

Is that a CMOS setting?

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