BSOD upon startup. No boot. Registry Cannot load System hive

[mrklean]

Well this is the second computer I've gotten in less than a week with similar symptoms so I thought I'd see what everyone thinks.

Just got machine. Plugged her in, turned on, got to the Windows 7 boot splash, sat there for a very long time, and hit BSOD!

STOP: c0000218 {Registry File Failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\systemroot\system32\config\system
or its log or alternate
It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.

Now obvious signs point to registry is long since gone missing. Well I'm thinking different.

First off I booted up into a recovery console from the advanced boot options menu. Everything got in just fine and I opened the console up and tried to do a chkdsk /f.

chkdsk /f
The disk is write-protected.

Hmm, that's the exact same problem I had on the machine I had a few days ago. (though it never gave me the BSOD registry stop. I should really just stop talking about that machine the owner just said reformat it so I did)

So in trying to get at least a chkdsk to run, I went into diskpart.exe and was poking around. System drive is not read-only and is healthy. Smart also says drive tests fine. Hmm...

Next try a system restore, well simply that failed. It couldn't write to the drive...

Checked Bios next. Nothings funky. Restored it to defaults and tried booting anyways. Nada.

Seems to me like most of the system is just fine, just something is blocking everything from writing to the drive.

I know I am not following "rules" with no dump file, but I can't get one if it doesn't boot right?

I've googled the crap out of this write-protected stuff and I can't find anything that relates to a Windows 7 box. It's all XP or 2000 :lol:

My idea is to backup the current registry hives and replace them with repair files (i know XP had them but unsure if 7 does) then boot into safe mode and replace the hives again with a set from System Restore.

Anyone want to enlighten me on exactly how to do that in Windows 7?

Or have any ideas on how to fix this problem?

 

[writhziden]

The problem is you are trying to run chkdsk on X:, which is the virtual hard disk created by the recovery software. You need to change to C:, D:, or E: (most systems have a C: partition in restore that is system reserved and a D: drive that is the Windows partition; if a vendor created a recovery partition, drive E: may also exist).

• Use http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/666-advanced-boot-options.html to select Repair Your Computer and get to the http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/668-system-recovery-options.html. Then select the command prompt. Do the following:
  
  chkdsk /r c:
  chkdsk /r d:
  chkdsk /r e:
  chkdsk /r f:​
  .etc until you get the message that the volume could not be opened for direct access. For any drives that do not give the message:
  Windows has checked the file system and found no problems
  run chkdsk again as above. In other words, if it says:
  Windows has made corrections to the file system
  after running the disk check, run the disk check again.