My aunt called me up and told me that she has a problem with her laptop. I haven't seen it in person yet, so I don't know the exact details, but this is what she told me.

It's a Toshiba laptop with XP Home, I think. It's XP Media Center.

She says AT&T was supposed to download & install something for her internet, but who knows what the heck the AT&T person did because now her computer won't boot into Windows at all anymore.

She told me that when it starts up, it asks if she wants to start Windows normally or boot it up in Safe Mode. Either option she picks (or if she just leaves it to count down) will show that Windows is starting up, but instead of starting Windows, it just reboots and goes back to the same selection screen.

The AT&T tech told her she'd probably have to run the restore discs. Good going, AT&T!

I'll know more on Sunday when I go there, but maybe someone had some ideas of things I could try to fix it without having to restore it. My aunt doesn't want to lose any data, so if restoring ends up being the only option, then I'll have to bring my PC & an enclosure to back up her stuff.

EDIT: She said there were other options besides safe mode & normal boot and tried them all.

At the screen where it asks to Windows normally or boot it up in Safe Mode there should also be an option to boot using the Last Known Good Configuration. Try that first.

Can she use the F8 key to get to the advanced boot options as the system starts up? If so, have her try to select the option to boot with the "Last known good configuration" option to see if that breaks the loop.

I think that's one of the options she mentioned she had when I was on the phone with her. There were more besides the two I listed in my post, but I couldn't remember them when I posted, but I do remember her mentioning something that included "good configuration" in it. So that isn't working either since she said she tried *every* option that was available.

I'll find out for sure tomorrow when I look at it in person.

Yup, Last Known Good Configuration doesn't work. It's one of the options and it does the same as all the other options.

What it does is show the Windows XP splash screen, then that screen goes away to show just a black screen. Then right before it reboots, there's a quick flash of a blue screen. The blue screen isn't up long enough for me to be able to read what it says, so I'm gonna try to take a video of it and freeze the frame on the blue screen.

I took it home with me to work on it. It's a Toshiba Satellite A105-S4014. I can't figure out how to take the hard drive out of it since it's got this weird rubber/silicone thing around it. I hope it doesn't have a SATA hard drive since all I have are PATA enclosures. If it's a SATA drive, I'll probably use a Linux Live CD to boot it up and save her files.

EDIT: Here's the blue screen:

This is what it says:

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.

Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete.
Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further
assistance.

Found a page on Microsoft about this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

Reading through that right now, but I don't have an XP Media Center disc to try it with (that's what's installed on the laptop). All I have is the recovery CD. I wonder if there's a way to do the same thing with that.

If you repair using your XP cd, it shouldn't touch the user data in anyway. However, I would highly suggest using the same XP version (Home, Pro, or Media Center) as the existing machine to make the most compatible when it's finally restored.

I'll back up her data first before I use my XP Pro disc to run the Recovery Console.

Gonna try this to replace the SystemRoot\System32\Config\Software with a backup. Hopefully there's a restore point on there somewhere before AT&T did their damage.

Miranda, I've seen this very often and fixed it more times than I can remember. Yes, you can use a different XP disc to load the recovery console.

It it so much easier to fix if you can connect the hard drive to an external enclosure. That way you can just backup, copy and paste the files between folders instead of creating new folders, copying files, deleting files & copying again (all one at a time, and typing the path each time). However, if you can't connect the drive to an external enclosure just follow the instructions carefully.

Oh, and don't just replace the System32\Config\Software file. You may find other error messages after doing that. Replace all the files mentioned in the KB article.

Another thing....after recovering the OS perform a diagnostic test on the hard drive to see if it's performing properly. I suggest finding the hard drive manufacturer then download diagnostic software from their website.

I don't think I'll try taking out the hard drive anymore. And I believe it's a SATA drive, so I don't have an external enclosure for it anyway.

But now that I've got Ubuntu Live running on it, maybe I'll do the copying & pasting of files while I'm in Ubuntu instead of typing in the paths in Recovery Console. It looks like there are 18 restore points that I'll be able to choose from, so that looks promising.



I'm backing up/replacing all of those files right now. And I'll make sure to run a diagnostic test once I can get it to boot into Windows again. Thanks!

So far Ubuntu is telling me that there was an error copying the "software" file to my external drive. It says: Error reading from file: Input/output error so it really looks like that file corrupt. I'll see if it gives the same error for the other files as well.

EDIT: Ubuntu only gave the error message for the "software" file - the other files (default, SAM, SECURITY, and system) backed up to my external drive without errors.

Got Windows to boot!

The hard drive on it is a Toshiba and it doesn't look like they make their own diagnostics software.

Any recommended ones I should use to test the drive?

Try the hitachi drive utility
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT
Get the CD image version

Thanks! The drive tested fine for the quick test. Should I run the advanced test too or is the quick one enough?

Here's what I think messed it up in the first place...

As I was shutting down the PC to boot from the diagnostics disc, Windows XP had to install 7 updates. The updates took a few minutes to get through and it clearly said on the screen that it would shut off automatically once it finished and NOT to shut down or unplug the PC (it alternated between that message and "installing X of 7 updates"). The AT&T person who worked on it must not have seen that or was in too much of a rush to wait for updates, so they probably shut it off during the updates.

That's my theory anyway. Who knows what really happened.

I'd say shutting it down while updates were installing messed it up.

The quick test should be fine. I believe the advanced test checks the disk for surface errors which can take a very long time. If there was something seriously wrong with the drive the quick test should have detected it.

As a matter of protocol, when something like this happens I like to test the drive to make sure it's not failing. Quick and easy to do