Blue Screen of Death -- Please Help

[colgin]

On Monday night I used my Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop and everything was fine and I shut down.

On Tues. night Windows XP and I kept getting the following Blue Screen of Death message (regardless of whether I tried to load Windows,Safe Mode, etc.):

STOP: c0000218 cannot load hive \systemroot\system32\confIg\SOFTWARE


I checked for various fixes on the internet. I found the following one here
but I could some of the required execute commands for copying files did not work (it would not allow me to copy the software registry) so I aborted.

Also, my Dell should have the automatic Dell System Restore which takes the computer back to the intial "as delivered" settings, but when I tried CTR F11 at the Dell screen nothing happended and I just went to the non-working Wondows page.

I don't have that much data that I will lose if I do a clean install. I am wondering whether it is worth paying someone to try to recover or even paying someone to help me with the clean install. I have all the original disks (Windows, XP, Office, drivers) and I want to know if someone like myself who is not very computer literate can reinstall all of these following the Dell online directions or wehther I should pay someone like Geek Squad to come to my apartment to try to reinstall (it costs about $250).

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

[BBill]

Before doing a clean install or reformat you might want to read this:
How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

see the XP repair install section

A reformat would lose existing data for sure, with this there is the possibility of recovering it and you would not have to pay the geek squad.
hth

[BiPolar_Nut]

The problem w/ doing a repair install is Dell OEM discs don't give you a repair/inplace-reinstall option [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] There is a way to enable that option, but it involves editing a file on the cd so it's an iso rip, software mount, edit, reburn process. Possibly beyond the scope of the OP's comfort level.

I've often heard of people paying like $90. Personally I wouldn't do it for $90 but that seemed the going rate where I used to live.

All you need to do is boot from the CD...what happens if you put the recovery cd in and reboot? Does it try to boot from the cd at all?

[colgin]

Thanks I had previously seen that repair article but it seemed to go beyond my comfort zone as to what I was capable of doing.

[colgin]

[ QUOTE ]
All you need to do is boot from the CD...what happens if you put the recovery cd in and reboot? Does it try to boot from the cd at all?

[/ QUOTE ]

I was able to configure the BIOS to look at the CD first and I can get it to the reinstall page. However, I have not proceeded as I am worried I won't have the technical know-how to reinstall everything correctly. Can I do any damage if I mess it up. If the worst case is that I need to have a pro do the reinstall then there is no harm in trying myself first. However, I don't want to make things worse.

[BiPolar_Nut]

I can't think of anything you could damage any further since you're starting over w/ a fresh reformat.

Worst case scenario would be you get stuck not knowing what to do at some screen and have to post here and wait for an answer before continuing.

You won't break anything that isn't already broken...nor will you make anything worse for someone else to do a reformat if for some reason it comes to that.

GL and post back w/ any problems/questions along the way.

[colgin]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

I realized that my computer was still under warranty so I decided to give Dell technical support a call. I have heard terrible things about them but I figured it was worth a shot.

The technician (who yes, seemed to be located somewhere in India) was pretty helpful. We ran through some diagnostic tests and were unable to do a restore. I thought that if I gave the computer to someone knowledgable I might get it restored but in NY that would cost me $200_ and there was no guarantee that I wouldn't need to do a clean reinstall of Windows in then end anyway.

So I decided to let the Dell tech guy help me reinstall Windows, which at least would be for free.

I told him that I already tried the Dell System Restore several times by pushing CTR F11 upon turning on the computer and that it had not worked. He tried to walk me through that process to see if we could get that to work as it would be the most painless. After three tries I could nt get to the Restore screen. Just as we were about to do a manual reinstall with all the CD's (which could have taken a few hours), I go tthe Dell System Restore screen to come up. The machine was back to its "as delivered"state in about 10 miutes and I then spent a few hours formatting, downloading software, etc.

Tomorrow I will buy an external hard drive to avoid data loss disasters in the future. If anyone has any suggestions for saving systems setups (e.g., Norton Ghost) I would appreciate it.

[BBill]

Good to hear you got things working