Cant reformat with recovery discs! PLEASE HELP!

M

mda13336

Hi thanks for looking.
I hope you are able to help with this situation.

A few days ago I was running Windows XP home SP2 on my one year old laptop. It got slow and I wanted to reformat with the discs. I followed the procedures and got this error message:

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


I then managed to get hold of a Windows XP Pro SP2. I installed that no problem. But I really want to be able to use the recovery discs as they have all the drivers and software etc etc that I want.

I hope you can be of assistence! THANKS!
 
The recovery discs could be bad. Can you order new ones? I had an Emachines with a recovery DVD that went bad and I had to order a new one for like $20
 
thanks for that, where can I get them from? also, will it be for the exact model?

What would have caused my discs to go bad?
 
Try cleaning the disks with a mild cleaner that leaves no residue like Windex. There might be some grease, dirt or something that is interfering with the reading of some files.
 
Two problems come to mind:
1. When using the recovery disks, did you perform the destructive recovery?
or
2. did you just you attempt a recovery which is basically a repair?
Sometimes, when you try a recovery which is just basically a repair, Windows may be too far gone to attempt this.
Another problem may be that the hdd has fried. Had the same problem with my daughters HP laptop.
 
Did you run checkdisk as the very first thing in the recovery console?

It's not clear from your post just when during the "procedure" you encountered the problem but i assume you got as far as the first prompt in the Recovery Console? The very first thing you do is run checkdisk. This can sometimes be all you need to fix registry corruption issues. chkdsk c: /r

If it reports anything fixed once its done running, enter exit to quit the recovery console and reboot. See if the problem has cleared.
 
hey everyone, thanks for the help!
I actually just ended up installing XP, and spent a few hours getting all the drivers etc.

thanks all for the help.
To answer your questions, I didnt have the choice of which mode of recovery to take. Also, I didnt do checkdisk, sounds like it would have helped. thanks!
 
You're better off doing it that way - XP then Drivers, as the Recovery Drivers would be outdated, and there's normally a lot of "Bloatware" installed on them - i.e trial versions, a myriad of HP apps, etc etc.

Hopefully you'll notice it's running nicer!
 

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