Resolved XP Registry Corrupted every time PC shuts down

Every time I reboot my PC (running Windows XP Home Edition with SP3) I get a blue screen with the following message:

Stop: 0xc0000218 {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.

I am able to reboot into Safe Mode and then recover my registry from a backup copy (eg one created by ERUNT) and then the PC will boot ok in normal mode. HOWEVER, the above error always re-occurs the next time I reboot the PC. So it seems like the registry is getting corrupted every time the PC shuts down, presumably when it is being unloaded.

I've run chkdsk /r and the volume is clean. My anti-virus and anti-spyware tools report no problems and I've no reason to suspect virus activity.

I've had a good search around for an answer and I can see various suggestions about how to fix a corrupted registry. But that is not my problem: I can recover the registry ok, but it gets corrupted again as soon as the PC is rebooted.

Does anyone have any ideas why this repeated corruption is happening and, more importantly, how to fix it please.

Thanks in advance, Paul.

 

Recovering a corrupt registry

Thanks Pete - but I've tried this process. It recovers the registry ok, but as soon as I reboot the PC the next time, the registry is corrupted once again. So my problem is not with recovering the registry - I've got several ways of doing that - but I need to find a way of stopping it getting corrupted on every reboot. Right now, I need to go through this recovery procedure every time I reboot !
Thanks, Paul

 

Thanks Pete, I really appreciate all these ideas and suggestions.

Sadly though, I've already tried most of them. I went through that Microsoft article and although it did a pretty good job of describing the problem it really didnt offer much idea of how to solve it. One particular part was of interest though:
"To prevent the corruption, try to close all running processes before you shut down the computer. You may be able to narrow the scope to a single process that is involved. Even if you determine the process, you may be unable to prevent a component from being unloaded before the registry hive is written to. However, if you make sure that you stop the process before shut down, you may be able to prevent registry hive corruption."
Any idea what is intended here by "closing all running processes "? I could go into task manager and individually end each process before shutting down, but some of the processes must be critical to the PC continuing to operate.... ending them all would probably not be a good idea ?

I've tried various utilities for testing the hard drive and it shows up clean. No disk errors are reported in the Windows event viewer either.

I do have the capability to perform a Windows repair but I'm trying to leave it as a last resort if all else fails (and we may be getting there !) as I suspect it will cause other issues as presumably it rebuilds the registry from scratch ?

Thanks again for your suggestions....

Regards, Paul

 

Thanks again Pete. I'll give these suggestions a try just as soon as I can find the time and will report back here.
Regards, Paul

 

Thanks Steve, I'll give that a try too.
Regards, Pauk

 

After a few more hours following the various helpful suggestions, here is what I've found so far:

Memtest86: runs clean for hours

Hitachi/IBM Disk Fitness Tool shows no errors, even with the advanced test

Disabling all processes prior to shut down makes no difference to the problem

Disabling anti-vius, anti-spyware, firewall etc makes no difference to the problem

HOWEVER, I did discover something interesting: if I schedule a disk check prior to rebooting (c:disk properties->error checking, check both boxes and schedule it to run on next boot) then the PC always starts normally once the disk check completes ! In other words, doing this either fixes or avoids the registry corruption problem even though the disk check does not claim to find or fix any errors.

Incidentally I found that running chkdsk /p/r from the recovery console prior to a normal boot does NOT achieve the same result - the registry would still fail to load.

So, does this indicate that something may be wrong with the disk (despite the evidence from the disk fitness tool) or is it perhaps that simply running the disk check as a part of the boot process changes the timing or flow of that process and so the problem simply never occurs ?

Its interesting that chkdsk run from the recovery console does not produce the same result - but then again I seem to recall that it does a somewhat different set of checks/actions than the one scheduled from within Windows via disk properties etc.

Your thoughts or suggestions on this mystery gratefully received please..... it beats me !
Regards, Paul

 

Hi Paul, Have you tried this :http://simple-pc-help.com/How-To-Repair-Error-0xC0000218-Instantly/

All users say it worked every time. Neil.

 

Going to simple-pc-help.com triggered protests from WOT in FireFox with warning : This site has a poor reputation.

I would be vary of downloading & running anything from this site.

 

Thanks for this suggestion but I'm very reluctant to use this kind of "fix all" repair tool as in my experience they can cause more harm than good. I'm still keen to try to fix this specific problem if anyone has any ideas what the underlying issue might be.
Regards, Paul

 

This link deals directly with the error message that you are receiving. But although it dosen't mention anything about the error repeating after a reg repair it may be worth trying. I would suggest the final solution in the list, correcting the registry entries manually and deleting the old ones. Time consuming but might just fix it.

If this fails I would suggest going to the virus and malware forum and using their scanners to be certain you scanners haven't missed anything. Post the logs and let the experts have a look.


http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_repair_a_stop.htm

As you will read in the first paragraph the registry entry in question is called a hive, there are five of these and the repair has to deal with all of them, not just the one. I am guessing here, but maybe this is the reason that your previous attempts have not worked.

 

A possible resolution...

I am sorry that it has taken me so long to respond to the various suggestions regarding my thread but frankly it has taken me until now to get any kind of resolution to the problem.

I followed all the helpful advice given by other members but unfortunately nothing gave me a solution. Actually the problem seemed to be getting worse over time and eventually I wasn't even able to log-in to Windows as it said the user profile(s) was corrupt.

At this point I rebooted into Safe Mode and, as a last desperate attempt to fix the problem, ran the Windows disk defragmenter on my C: drive. And now the system appears to be working normally again !

I have no idea why this might have resolved the problem, especially since I understand that the defragmenter cant tackle registry hives and other locked system files. I would be interested in any informed opinions on that. Of course I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the problem does not simply return .... but several days later, so far so good.

Thanks again for the helpful suggestions.
Paul

 

I'll keep my fingers crossed but as you say defrag just does a tidying up job.

If you spot anything strange starting to happen I would go to our Malware and Virus forum, could be a bug that defrag has moved that might explain why the problem had been getting worse. A visit there now may save further problems, just to be on the safe side.

 

Something similar happened to someone I was trying to help out. There was a powersupply failure and some months later, he had HDD failure.
I use PerfectDisk as it defragments the MFT and Boot files.

 

Let us know how it goes. If all is well please mark the thread as resolved from the "Thread Tools" tab in the top right hand corner of the first post.

May be PerfectDisc has fixed it