Hi, thanks for reading this.



A work colleague has brought her home laptop in with the above problem. Basically, it was trying to run CHKDSK every boot, then bluescreened after the vista loading progress bar. It did the same when trying to go into safe mode.

I pulled the hard drive and found that it did not have a C:\Windows\System32\config\SOFTWARE file, so I copied the last one back in from the RegBack folder (dated 16 April 2012)

Now it's stuck in a reboot loop, whether I choose safe mode or boot normally. It is a clean(ish) reboot, though, because there's no prompt to run CHKDSK any more.

I have access to another vista laptop (HP) which does have a recovery partition. If I can use this to create a basic repair CD for the Dell, that would be great.

Any ideas on how I can find out what is causing the reboot?

Forgot to say...
Can't run the BSOD Dump & System File Collection app because it assumes the host PC is the one it should be reporting. I can attach the DMP file from the pulled hard drive, if it helps.
Vista x86 OEM with no recovery partition or CDs
Laptop is circa 5 years old, not reinstalled

HP tattoo's their BIOS so that you can only use a like model to create the recovery disks.

Please attach as many of the dump files as you can recover (up to the most recent 20 or so)

You can read the BSOD by accessing the Safe Mode menu and selecting "Disable automatic restart on system failure"

Yes, it's possible that copying the one registry hive (without the others) has caused this problem.
Have you tried copying all of the hives from the REGBACK location? (don't delete the others, just rename them so you can go back to them if you need to).

In case this is an infection, try these free, bootable antivirus disks: Free Online AntiMalware Resources

Thank you for your reply.

I've deleted the software hive, and put the others back to their original state at the time of the crash (this is by pulling the drive and accessing it in another PC).

I've downloaded Vista Home Basic and followed the procedure for a repair - it's come up with "cannot be automatically repaired". I am able to then try a system restore, but that doesn't work, either. I'll attach the crash dump logs tomorrow, when I get my hard drive caddy back...

Please don't delete anything. Rather, rename it to something that will remind you of what it was. That way, if the replacement causes problems - you can then re-use the renamed file.

Originally Posted by usasma

Please don't delete anything. Rather, rename it to something that will remind you of what it was. That way, if the replacement causes problems - you can then re-use the renamed file.

There was no software hive file when I got my hands on the laptop, so to get it back into its "original" state, I need to delete that file if it's a copy I've brought back from the windows\system32\config directory.

I have tried booting the system as-is, when I received the laptop; booting with just a copy of the software file from windows\system32\config\regback, and a copy of all the hive files from the regback folder.

The procedure I used was to press F8 and enable boot logging. After that boot cycle fails I allow the boot error choices screen to come up, and select "safe mode".

1. When booting with no software hive file, the error message in the thread title appears, a memory dump is undertaken, but no Ntbtlog.txt is created.
2. When booting with a software hive file copied in from regback, there is the briefest of bluescreens, and no memory dump. When it gets to the safe boot segment, the scrolling text gets as far as crcdisk.sys before it self-reboots. It does create ntbtlog.txt - I've attached it to this message, and it contains both the log of the original full boot and the attempt to go into safe mode.
3. When booting with all the hive files copied in from regback, there is no difference with the results of booting with just the software hive. The only difference between the resulting ntbtlog.txt files is the times contained within the log, so I've not bothered attaching this log file.

Thanks for looking...

Nothing obvious visible in the boot log files.
Are you able to upload a zipped copy of the memory dump files?

Welcome
Download Macrium Reflect. Make an image, now, while the computer is working well. If you have problems, no need to reinstall, just use the image.
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
As a hint, install a few upadates, if computer is still working well, make another image. If you have problems, you will have an image to the point that the updates began causing problems.