A fellow tech guided me to this MS article. It's rather involved but I thought it was worth posting, if for no other reason than to show what can be done to repair a broken system.
To have this work, the computer does needs to have the system restore feature turned on.
A friend repaired a laptop using similar method over a year ago, which is where I originally heard of this.
Any system that utilizes standby, power down hard drive, or hibernation seem to be more suseptable to these errors. Somehow they don't wake up properly and trash the registry.
Another thing I've seen often enough to warrant mention, is that when the system32\config error shows up, the hard drive has begun making bad sectors and is starting to fail.
I've successfully used a bootable live cd to do something very similar at least a dozen times. My process is more direct, but either way it works. I recently tried it on a non booting system, that gave me no indication that the registry was trashed, and was able to get it running again.
MS KB 307545
On a similar note, in the c:\_restore\archive folder on a Windows ME system, there are old versions of the registry that can be used to fix a blue screened computer, in a manner like what is described in the article. You just have to deal with the user.dat, system.dat, and in ME, there is a third file named classes.dat.
To have this work, the computer does needs to have the system restore feature turned on.
A friend repaired a laptop using similar method over a year ago, which is where I originally heard of this.
Any system that utilizes standby, power down hard drive, or hibernation seem to be more suseptable to these errors. Somehow they don't wake up properly and trash the registry.
Another thing I've seen often enough to warrant mention, is that when the system32\config error shows up, the hard drive has begun making bad sectors and is starting to fail.
I've successfully used a bootable live cd to do something very similar at least a dozen times. My process is more direct, but either way it works. I recently tried it on a non booting system, that gave me no indication that the registry was trashed, and was able to get it running again.
MS KB 307545
On a similar note, in the c:\_restore\archive folder on a Windows ME system, there are old versions of the registry that can be used to fix a blue screened computer, in a manner like what is described in the article. You just have to deal with the user.dat, system.dat, and in ME, there is a third file named classes.dat.
