I am planning to do a system recovery on my 2002 Windows XP Compaq. Everytime it starts up it will come up with a blue screen saying:

STOP: c0000218 {registry file failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file)
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SECURITY
or its log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Hi,

The following link seems to have the answer:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_sys32.htm

You don't have a spare Hard drive do you? If you don't, it might be worth it to buy one (an 80GB IDE drive is around $40-$50 nowdays, check Newegg, not CompUSA). You could put your spare drive in, put Windows on it, mount the second drive, and copy important files over. Then you would have more disk space (or if you already have plenty of disk space a backup drive) and you would have a clean install of Windows. It can be a good idea to reinstall Windows every couple of years, as the operating system can be bogged down by programs you have installed over the years (as everytime you install or remove a program you edit the registry, change dll's, and do tons more that I don't even know about).

Good luck,

I tried the site Kellys Korner and it just confused me. I do have a spare hard drive.

Originally Posted by jlcndc

I tried the site Kellys Korner and it just confused me. I do have a spare hard drive.

The article should work. With your Compaq you should have the recovery console burnt to a disk, or on a disk to load up at boot time......

Have the instructions from Kelly's corner printed out, and follow them. Cache is correct, and this problem can be fixed.

~Ana