Arghhh! WinXP registry errors!

[Servanya]

Hi.
When I install XP, I usually get to reboot about 2 times before I see this message:

Stop 0x0.......
REGISTRY HIVE FILE MISSING OR CORRUPTED.

This comes up right when the splash screen is loading. Safe mode won't work either.
Then it just gives a directory path: \winnt\system32
All errors like this on google and microsoft.com actually say 1 particular file, not just a directory. Usually the "last known good" menu.

So, last month I got pissed.....I bought a new HD and installed win2k - everything worked fine. Last night I felt brave and did the upgrade to winXP. Upon the first boot, I got the error! This sucks.
Oh, one more thing - I used a different install disk for windows.
New HD - WD 40gig.
epox 8k7v+ mobo.
512MB PC2100
GeForce2 pro 64

I am sooo stuck and frustrated.
Any Ideas? I was thinking RAM - but it worked with win2k. I was thinking mobo - but it worked in win2k (see where I'm going with this?). Maybe winXP loads differently - accessing something in a different way than win2k - in a way that makes my hardware go crazy? I'm really reaching here.
Anyone?

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

maybe special IDE drivers for your mobo under XP?

 

[Servanya]

Nope - very common motherboard. And it worked for about a month when I first got it.

 

[MCS]

I have the same problem, its extremely annoying! It is probably caused by a specific piece of software you have installed or a driver. Luckily for me I run my system 24/7 but on the occasions that I have had to reboot for whatever reason I too have been faced with that message - and left with NOTHING that I can do about it. I have just kept going back to a Ghost image of the partition that I made. I have not gotten to the bottom of it either, instead I just reinstalled XP, but ended up Ghosting off the fresh install and going back to the old one because I simply haven't had chance to reinstall all my software yet and I needed a fully installed system. I need to start the process of uninstalling a piece of software, and then rebooting a few times to see if the problem goes away. No point in starting fresh only to put the problem software/driver back on...

I would love to hear from you if you find out what the problem is!!

 

[Psychoholic]

<< Hi. XP sucks >>


Oh boy, <rolleyes>. Another person who has problems with their configuration, while the majority have no problem, comes to the assumption ( and we all know what happens when you assume) that the problem has to be XP.

Check your drivers and hardware carefully. When files start getting corrupted like this, I've never seen the problem stem from XP or W2K. It's a hardware/driver issue. Just because it works in W2K, as you have informed us, doesn't mean the drivers work in XP. You may also want to check for a new BIOS revision.

A few other observations, are you using FAT32 or NTFS??? XP was meant to be used with NTFS and problems with corruption using FAT32 are fairly common.

Did you upgrade to XP both times, or did you perform a clean install of XP??? An upgrade to a new OS is not the wisest way to install the new OS. You can carry over a driver that has compatibility problems with the new OS or cause a completely new problem.

 

[Servanya]

Actually, XP is the best OS so far, something is just fux0red.

It isn't a driver issue. It worked for a month on XP when I first got it. And this time, windows didn't boot the first time.

{edit}It was freshly formatted too.
{edit}it's NTFS

 

[Servanya]

MCS:
Well, at least I'm not alone!

I think an IMPORTANT point here is: My computer took a winXP install just fine. It worked for a month. I stress this point because I thought it could be driver related too (then I decided this isn't the case) -

the latest install was from a fresh format.

 

[Psychoholic]

<< It was freshly formatted too. >>


I didn't ask whether it was a fresh format, just a fresh install. If, by format, you mean fresh installation when you say fresh format it seems to contradict with your opening post:


<< Last night I felt brave and did the upgrade to winXP >>



A fresh format and a fresh installation are 2 different things.



<< I think an IMPORTANT point here is: My computer took a winXP install just fine. It worked for a month. I stress this point because I thought it could be driver related too (then I decided this isn't the case) - >>


Just because XP runs for a month and gives no problems doesn't mean it can't, or isn't, a driver issue. If writes are being performed that corrupts files this may not surface as a problem until later. This is where you're problem lies.



<< it's NTFS >>


Good boy!!! However, NTFS isn't going to save you if you have a driver or hardware problem, so you still need to do some hardware/driver research.

 

[MCS]

After having done some more research into this there is the possibility that this is not at all either a driver or a software issue.

Go here.

PS - I suggest you edit your comment at the start of your post Servanya, it is a little provocative.

 

[Psychoholic]

MCS, that particular problem was fixed in XP and is only present in W2K FWIW.

 

[Servanya]

Good link MCS.

It seems that those people used a patch for win2k for a similar problem.

I did notice one little thing though... all of them had ATA100 or raid controllers. My HD is on a HPTraid controller, and I have tried the onboard ATA100 too.

All of the things in the other forum sound like they would help - except that I am stuck now. THIS time - my computer gave the error before I ever got to boot the first time.

 

[MCS]

<< MCS, that particular problem was fixed in XP and is only present in W2K FWIW. >>



How do you know this? Is this an opinion or a fact? I have seen sufficient evidence now to suggest that in some cases the problem has not been resolved. After all, XP is based heavily on 2K.

Servanya - my HD is on an HPT ATA-100 controller too. Thanks for ruling that out of me (perhaps).

 

[Servanya]

Psychoholic: Let me clear things up here.

install 1: ran for a month - no issues.
Got registry errors.
reformatted and reinstalled many times - gave up and ran win2k because I needed to do some things in Flash.
Last night: upgraded to XP.
Got registry errors upon first reboot.
Formatted HD.
Reinstalled XP.
Got registry errors upon first reboot.

Not a driver issue. Hardware issue: possible. IMHO-it's not bad hardware, but a hardware configuration that confuses XP (and me)

EDIT: "fresh install", in my mind, means that the HD was formatted.

 

[Yonux]

I actually experienced something very similar to what you are seeing Servanya with your XP installation. I currently have a very stable system running either 98SE, W2kPro or XP Pro.

Just to let you know I don?t have a stable system when I start playing with my BIOS settings. I noticed between O/S?s that I was able to tweek different areas of my BIOS before I went too far. Starting on XP Pro with a clean install after fdisking and formatting (either NTFS or Fat32) I would see the error screen you saw, when I set my Memory settings to a value that was fine in W2k but not in XP. I also noticed that when I disabled IDE1 controller (as I run SCSI for my CD-Rom and CD-W) I would also get the error you indicated.

You may want to go into your BIOS and set the values to Default or Fail-Safe if that is an option. I would only need to set my memory setting to fail-safe before I was able to install XP without error and then later increase the settings to more normal operation. I do have CAS2 memory 2 512 Sticks of SDRAM 133, but I didn?t go with crucial as I had built this system prior to joining this board.

I am not sure if you are O?Cing but if you are I imagine you have already tried to set your CPU to the recommended values.

I hope this helps,. and good luck with getting your XP running it?s a great O/S.

Yonux

 

[Psychoholic]

<< How do you know this? Is this an opinion or a fact? I have seen sufficient evidence now to suggest that in some cases the problem has not been resolved. After all, XP is based heavily on 2K. >>


Of course it's vbased heavily on W2K, it is, after all, basically NT 5.1.

A few weeks before the release of XP I read an article on it. It described in detail the fixes, enhancements, etc. This was one item that was touched on in the article. What evidence have you seen to suggest otherwise, I would be curious to see under exactly what circumstances the problem surfaces in XP. This was an issue with the beta version of XP and was corrected.



<< Not a driver issue. >>


The inconsistancy in the fact that it ran for a month then it had problems, and later encountered problems right off the bat still shows a "flaky" inconsistancy that would still point to a driver IMO.

 

[Servanya]

I was waiting for someone to ask about overclocking.

This was my first thought. I used to run my T-bird 1.4 @ 1.6, and my video card at the GeForce2 ultra specs. I have changed everything back. And I set the BIOS to fail-safe defaults. I ran win2k OC'ed, but when I got these errors after my upgrade, I set the defaults before reformatting and trying again.

EDIT: Yonux, when you re-enabled your IDE1 controller, did you have to reinstall, or just reboot for windows to work again? I was thinking about disabling things - but I don't know if I need to reinstall windows each time. My thinking is that windows "corrupted" the hive file, so it won't load without being restored - I could be wrong

 

[MCS]

<< I would be curious to see under exactly what circumstances the problem surfaces in XP >>



So would I!

 

[Yonux]

EDIT: Yonux, when you re-enabled your IDE1 controller, did you have to reinstall, or just reboot for windows to work again? I was thinking about disabling things - but I don't know if I need to reinstall windows each time. My thinking is that windows "corrupted" the hive file, so it won't load without being restored - I could be wrong

The short answer was Yes,.(I had to reinstall) for some reason when i disabled my IDE1 Controller it (XP) would not allow me to either load or enter into XP. I have an IWILL KD266 MOBO with the ALi chipset (if i rememeber correctly), but you would think as long as I disabled the IDE controller in the BIOS prior to loading windows XP it would have worked =)

I was wrong... in my assumption :Q

Yonux

 

[Servanya]

New developments!

Last night - I flashed my BIOS, switched to the onboard ATA100 controller (instead of the HPT) reformatted the drive, and reinstalled XP. It booted! I actually got to install norton ghost and make a boot disk!
Anyways -
When I rebooted into windows, it froze on the splash screen - many times. When I chose safe mode, it froze while loading "amdagp.sys". Hmm...I have the AMD760 FSB chip - and an agp slot - hmmm. I swapped out my video card, and it still did the same thing. I think I'm gonna call Epox and RMA that bad boy. Because it worked with XP for a month when I first got it!!!! I may swap out the RAM as well.

 

[Psychoholic]

<< New developments!

Last night - I flashed my BIOS, switched to the onboard ATA100 controller (instead of the HPT) reformatted the drive, and reinstalled XP. It booted! I actually got to install norton ghost and make a boot disk!
Anyways -
When I rebooted into windows, it froze on the splash screen - many times. When I chose safe mode, it froze while loading "amdagp.sys". Hmm...I have the AMD760 FSB chip - and an agp slot - hmmm. I swapped out my video card, and it still did the same thing. I think I'm gonna call Epox and RMA that bad boy. Because it worked with XP for a month when I first got it!!!! I may swap out the RAM as well. >>



Didn't I tell you it was driver/hardware related????

Glad to see you're getting somewhere.

 

[MCS]

New Development here too.

In my case it was a driver problem.

I had installed some newer drivers for the onboard Highpoint controller (date 19/10), I rolled it back to the default MS drivers, and the problem has gone (phew). Thing is I installed the newer drivers to sort out another problem I was having and now THAT problem is back but it's only a minor one. Perhaps there are newer drivers still I can use now.

It was worth exploring other possibilities however, I did learn a thing or too.

Cheers!

 

[Psychoholic]

<< New Development here too.

In my case it was a driver problem.

I had installed some newer drivers for the onboard Highpoint controller (date 19/10), I rolled it back to the default MS drivers, and the problem has gone (phew). Thing is I installed the newer drivers to sort out another problem I was having and now THAT problem is back but it's only a minor one. Perhaps there are newer drivers still I can use now.

It was worth exploring other possibilities however, I did learn a thing or too. >>



Just so you won't feel left out, I'm glad you nailed your problem as well.

Now you need to get rid of Win98, FAT32, and start using the Recovery Console.

 

[MCS]

<< Now you need to get rid of Win98, FAT32 >>



Never!

 

[Servanya]

Good for you! Glad you got it fixed.

Wish it was that easy for me. My first reformat would have fixed it then

 

[BuckMaster]

Hey guys maybe you all can help me. Ive been running Win XP (NTFS) for 3 months now. Its crashed twice so far and I had to do a freash install each time. Both times it happned my screensaver was on and my PC just locked up hard! I had to hit the reset switch both times it came back up into windows registry errors. So since then I dont use a screen saver. I ghost my drive almost every week now to be safe. My question is when I use to run Win2000 I was able just to back up my registry on 1 floppy. I noticed however in XP the smallest backup I can make is like 15+ megs which is alot of floppys. It was so easy with Win2000 using the backup disk to fix my registry. From ready a few post it looks like you cant restore or fix it? I couldnt boot into safemode or run a repair. My question is hows the best way to backup my registry incase this happens again or can I from a bootdisk.

Epox 8KHA+
1.4 T-Bird
2-256 DDR 2100 Crucial
GeForce 2 Pro 64 MEG
SoundBlaster Live
Intel 10/100 Nic
Windows XP

Thanks!