Windows Vista Vista start up problems - Corrupt Registry?

Hoping someone can help here. My wife owns a Toshiba Satellite Laptop with Vista Home Premium installed. The other day the laptop went beep and shut down. Now it will not boot up - it gets the Toshiba screen then goes to a white flashing cursor in the top left. Pressing F8 does not open up the Recovery Console, I have downloaded a Recovery Console program and burnt it to a disc. I can select to boot from the DVD Drive and the Recovery console does open up.
I have tried the Start Up Repair, but consistently encounter an error which reads 'The exception breakpoint: A breakpoint has been reached (0x80000003) occurred in the application at location 0x739c746a: Click ok to terminate.'
It will then open a box stating that Windows cannot repair the problem. Under the details, it lists the following;

Problem Signature 01 External Media
Problem Signature 02 6.0.6000.16386.6.0.6001.18000
Problem Signature 03 6
Problem Signature 04 262148
Problem Signature 05 Corrupt Registry
Problem Signature 06 Corrupt Registry
Problem Signature 07 32
Problem Signature 08 3
Problem Signature 09 Rollback Registry
Problem Signature 10 32

I have also ran chkdsk from the Command Prompt, but that has found no errors.
There is no other back up disc and I don't have a copy of Vista with the laptop.

Any advice will be welcome. Thanks in advance.

 

Corrupt Registry is the worst error I can imagine/deal with. Windows can't work without it.

Me, I don't try "fixing" a corrupt registry, but you can try restoring from a previous backup.

You can take the hard drive out of the laptop and connect it into another (desktop) computer. You can backup the data there and then go on to reinstall the Windows system afresh.

Consider this if you can't find other suggestions.

Matt

 

For taking backup, its not necessary to perform surgery on the laptop. Just download Ubuntu Live Version, burn it on a cd, boot from it & backup to a usb device.

 

Go to the Startup Options menu (F8). From memory, it should list System Restore. Try running System Restores back in time from the last one.
EDIT:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Advanced-startup-options-including-safe-mode
Under: Repair your computer.

 

Thank you Mattman & Rsinfo.
I have considered reloading Windows and it does appear that is what will happen.
Mattman: The F8 function does not work - I have a recovery disc that I have tried, but the System Restore function does not work as it says that there are no restore points that it can read from.
Just one other question though, could this possibly be an indication of a failing hard drive?
Thanks

 

Not necessarily. If you have doubts, download & run the hdd manufacturer's utility.

 

I would as well, BUT HDD manufacturer's utilities look for bad sectors, if they find them they say the hard drive is bad and it should be returned under warranty (if it is still under warranty).

Windows Checkdisk (CHKDSK) can try to save data from bad sectors. Although you say "The F8 function does not work ", it is quite hard to "catch" at startup. It is between the BIOS screens and the Windows loading screens (you need to catch it before the OS starts loading). I start tap, tap, tapping the F8 key soon after the first screen appears.

You can go to the section Safe mode with command prompt and run the command
CHKDSK /r
leave it to run as long as it likes (like overnight). Don't stop or crash out of it.

If there are bad sectors in your registry files, CHKDSK might be able to recover them. If CHKDSK completes, your hard drive should have your data intact.

I think it unlikely that the "corrupt registry" report relates to a bad HDD, but it could if there are bad sectors where the registry files are located on the hard drive.

Matt

 

With modern multi gigbytes drives, its very common to have bad sectors. But the drive itself remaps & locks these bad sectors. The trouble starts when the drive runs out of the secors that can be allocated for mapping. If the software detects such a condition, it may suggest that you return the drive.

 

You are probably right guys. What I find though, is that the utilities can find problems like bad sectors, but can't fix them. I have run CHKDSK after the utilities and the drive is working again.

As far as I know though, if you have bad sectors they will only get worse, it is damage to the surface of the disks.

rsinfo, I don't know or haven't heard, that the the drive re-maps itself. I expect CHKDSK does it from my research.

Matt

 

mattman, here is a brief lowdown on Bad sector remapping.

 

Gentlemen, this has been a fascinating discussion! I have resolved the problem by re-installing Vista and the laptop is now working well. Thank you for the info.

 

Thanks for letting us know. That is the option I use without much hesitation if I suspect the registry is corrupted. I would still test and check the HDD though.

Please mark the thread Resolved.