{"id":730,"date":"2011-05-14T18:34:36","date_gmt":"2011-05-14T23:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/swildow.darktech.org\/wp\/?p=730"},"modified":"2011-05-14T18:34:36","modified_gmt":"2011-05-14T23:34:36","slug":"recovering-from-windows-registry-hive-corruption-the-smart-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/?p=730","title":{"rendered":"Recovering from Windows registry hive corruption, the smart way"},"content":{"rendered":"

from Carl’s Geek Blog\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/www.css-networks.com\/2010\/12\/recovering-from-windows-registry-hive-corruption-the-clever-or-smart-way\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

I like this trick. Every time I do it, I think about all those people doing repair installs (in-place upgrades).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It works pretty much every time unless the filesystem is really truly screwed, in which case you need a backup, say from the system restore directory (System Volume Information), as per this knowledgebase article<\/a> (don\u2019t bother with the recovery console though, use your USB to IDE or USB to SATA cable and fix it from your laptop.)<\/p>\n

Here are the symptoms. You try to start up your Windows 2000\/XP (Vista too?) computer and you get a message, white text on black background:<\/p>\n

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\CONFIG\\SYSTEM<\/p>\n

or<\/p>\n

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\CONFIG\\SOFTWARE<\/p>\n

Sometimes, the message is cut short, so you might see \u201c\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\CONFIG\\SYS\u201d or similar. Hint: If it\u2019s really cut short, and you can\u2019t see if it\u2019s SOFTWARE or SYSTEM, do the following procedure on both files. Whichever one is identified as having been repaired, well that\u2019s the one that was broken \";)\"<\/p>\n

Anyway, how to fix it in 2 minutes:<\/p>\n

Use your USB to IDE\/SATA adapter cable, and connect the broken machine\u2019s hard drive to your laptop, or your spare PC or whatever. You don\u2019t have to use a USB to IDE\/SATA adapter cable \u2013 if you\u2019re a person at home with another PC you can stick the drive on a spare IDE or SATA channel. You just need to get that hard drive into a working Windows XP computer for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

Windows will mount the broken computer\u2019s hard drive as, say E: or F:. Make sure you have your computer set to show hidden files and also system files. To check this, go into My Computer -> Tools -> Folder Options, -> View Tab, and select \u201cShow hidden files\u201d, and make sure \u201cHide protected operating system files\u201d is not ticked.<\/p>\n

First things first, run chkdsk on that drive, after all it is most likely filesystem corruption that has caused the registry to become corrupt in the first place. In My Computer, right-click the broken computer\u2019s drive and choose properties. Go to tools, \u201cCheck Now\u201d, put a tick in only the first box (Automatically fix filesystem errors), and click start. Let that finish before continuing.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where the magic happens. Go to start -> run, and type regedit [enter]. This will launch the registry editor on your computer. In the registry editor, highlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, and then go to File -> Load Hive. Find the file that is \u201cmissing or corrupt\u201d (from your error message earlier), and choose to load that. It will be in E:\\(or F:\\)Windows\\System32\\Config, and will be called just SOFTWARE or SYSTEM. Regedit will ask you to name the hive, just type \u201cbadpc\u201d (any old garbage will do \u2013 it\u2019s only temporary).<\/p>\n

Regedit will say \u201cOne or more files containing the registry were corrupt and had to be recovered by use of log files. The recovery was successful.\u201d You have just repaired the registry! Now you need to Un-load that hive, so highlight that \u201cbadpc\u201d hive that you can now see under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, and go to File -> Unload Hive.<\/p>\n

You now just need to put that hard drive back in the broken computer, which hopefully won\u2019t be broken any more! If you used a USB to SATA or USB to IDE cable from your laptop, make sure you use the \u201cSafely remove hardware\u201d icon in the system tray next to the clock to safely remove the hard drive, else you may cause filesystem corruption again. Alternatively just shut your laptop\/working computer down properly and remove the hard drive once it\u2019s shut down.<\/p>\n

All done.<\/p>\n

Some background:<\/p>\n

The registry is a database. It has transaction log files which can be used to recover from corruption. It would appear that the early Windows boot process is not able to work with those log files, but regedit (and Windows itself further on in the boot process) is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Carl’s Geek Blog\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/www.css-networks.com\/2010\/12\/recovering-from-windows-registry-hive-corruption-the-clever-or-smart-way\/ I like this trick. Every time I do it, I think about all those people doing repair installs (in-place upgrades).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=730"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":732,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions\/732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}