hello everyone
i have an IBM Thinkpad (laptop) that crashed a few days ago (won't boot up). Basically when i turn on the power button, the Windows 2000 Professional screen comes up, and it appears to load ok but when the navy status bar progresses towards the end, i get this blue screen of death, with the following error:

Stop: c0000218 {Registry File Failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate
It is corrupt, absent, or not writable

anyway after this it just reboots and the same thing happens again.

i have already tried using Safe Mode and Last Known Good, which did not work. I tried using the Microsoft Win2k Registry Repair utility (there's a link to it from my blog) but it said it could not repair it. And I don't have an ERD. :( I borrowed someone's Windows 2000 CD and went into the Recovery Console, and everything seemed to go along fine until it asks for my administrator password. i am an admin on my machine, and i enter that password, but it doesn't accept it. i entered blank password, and that didn't work either. i had the computing support folks at my university (the ones who did the original Win2k install 2 years ago) and they entered a bunch of different passwords but to no avail.

Anyway, i was just wondering what the workaround for this was. It seems like there should be one, since I know of at least one person who had the exact same problem on his Dell laptop running XP (same error, also couldn't get past the admin password part) and he eventually solved it (but unfortunately, he can't remember how he did it, since it was months ago)..argh ;-)

Anyway, any ideas on how to get around this are greatly appreciated!! :) once i get past this i think the repair process (replacing the corrupted files in the hive) should be straightforward...

i think u shuld repair ur windows installation. to do that, just boot from windows 2000 cd, when setup loads up , it`ll give u option to repair windows. select it and then select 'fast recovery', follow the instructions and it`ll repair and restore all system files and registery values (hopefully). as far as admin password is concerned, win2k is built on NT technology (as it says) and in win2k, it doesnt accepts blank passwords (theoretically). may be u have forgotten it or sumthing. well there was a way to change admin password, sumthing had to do with booting from boot disk made by windows n bla bla bla, i dont remember it sorry, i am sure u can find the solution if u search it on microsoft`s web site.