BSOVMD (Blue screen of very much dead)
Today was a rather interesting day. I've been working at our Lexus dealership for the past three days, installing and configuring new computers to replace some of our aging ones (Read as: Older than DOS). Yesterday, I set up a new machine for one of the women in customer support and began to transfer her data from her old machine to her new one. Now, as I mentioned in my last post, this process involves a 4GB flash drive. The problem with this is that she had almost 9GB of data to be moved, and I had very little space to spare on my drive. In addition, her old machine only supported USB 1.0, which is a horribly slow and painful thing to use when in a situation like this. Why didn't I use the network, you ask? Well, my company is a tad behind in the technology race. We don't have an Active Directory set up so to speak. Nor do we have file servers and the like to use for things like this. Instead, we have a very large group of highly disorganized, mismatched, nearly stand-alone computers in a loose type of... No, actually, we don't even have that. What we have is called chaos. This, of course, is what makes things fun.
I began to transfer batches of her information on to my flash drive, moving it from one machine to the other, and back again. Each upload took about an hour or so, with each download taking about 20 more minutes. After that, it took another 20 or 30 minutes to delete the information off of the flash drive so that I could repeat the process. You can begin to see how painfully annoying this could be after an hour or so. Eventually, I was forced to quit for the day and schedule another appointment there for this morning. This is where today's story starts...
I arrived there around 9:30am this morning and imediately rushed upstairs to begin moving the data. I had three other locations to be at today, and an increasing number of people who said they absolutely positively needed me for something extremely important (Probably their iTunes). On my way up, I was snagged by one of the women in finance, who had brought her personal notebook computer in for me to take a look at. As she uses it for work related purposes, I figured I'd give it a shot. That was a mistake I'd be regretting in about an hour or two.
I took the notebook upstairs and began a large file transfer onto my flash drive from the original set of computers I was working on. While that started, I set the notebook up and powered it on to take a look at it. Dell startup screen, Windows XP logo... Nothing wrong yet. This was going to be easy. I figured, "The computer won't boot" probably meant that their iTunes froze up or something. I get that kind of thing all the time. I looked up at the file transfer on the other machine and noticed it hadn't even began to calculate how long it would take. Looking back to the notebook, I was mildly shocked to see everyone's favorite error: The Blue Screen of Death. Alright, maybe she did have a slightly larger problem than her Prince album not playing properly (Who is he anyway?).
This was the message I was presented with:
STOP: c0000218 {registry file failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\Systemroot\System32\Config\SECURITY
or its log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent or not writable.
Now, I've never seen that before in my life. But the mention of 'System32' probably wasn't good. Neither was that registry thing it keeps talking about. I decided to Google it to find out what it all meant. The search really didn't turn up anything too surprising. The solution mostly involved using an XP installation disk to recover the missing or corrupt files. I slapped one in the CD ROM and tried a recovery. Interestingly enough, it didn't work. The recovery actually froze up. This was going to be a tad harder than expected. Not to worry, though. I've never had a problem I couldn't solve. And with the file transfer at .001% compete, I figured I had time.
I decided to try a different trick. Booting back up to the Windows installation disk, I entered the Recovery Console. This is a more powerful tool than the automated system, as it allows for more specific handling of the recovery process. I preformed a chkdsk on the machine (As per M$'s recommendation), and was presented with a message informing me that there were indeed errors to be found. ...That was helpful. So I decided to try a different approach. I copied the missing/damaged file from the CD onto the hard disk, replacing the bad one and rebooted. This time, the notebook was able to make it past the initial error. I was beginning to think that it actually worked. That was short lived.
I was presented with a second blue screen moments later. This one was identical to the first, save for the word "SECURITY" was replaced with "SYSTEM". Aparently, I was in a worse position than I had originally began in. I began searching Google groups and whatnot for another answer, but was mostly unsuccessful. After trying a few other tricks, and attempting to use a special recovery disk that I keep on me, I was forced to inform the woman that her notebook was very dead. I wasn't too thrilled with not being able to solve that problem without rebuilding the machine, but I suppose you can't win every battle. Looking back up at the file transfer, I noted that it was currently holding at 2% complete, and the line of people waiting to tell me aboout their problems was growing. This was going to be a long, long day.
I began to transfer batches of her information on to my flash drive, moving it from one machine to the other, and back again. Each upload took about an hour or so, with each download taking about 20 more minutes. After that, it took another 20 or 30 minutes to delete the information off of the flash drive so that I could repeat the process. You can begin to see how painfully annoying this could be after an hour or so. Eventually, I was forced to quit for the day and schedule another appointment there for this morning. This is where today's story starts...
I arrived there around 9:30am this morning and imediately rushed upstairs to begin moving the data. I had three other locations to be at today, and an increasing number of people who said they absolutely positively needed me for something extremely important (Probably their iTunes). On my way up, I was snagged by one of the women in finance, who had brought her personal notebook computer in for me to take a look at. As she uses it for work related purposes, I figured I'd give it a shot. That was a mistake I'd be regretting in about an hour or two.
I took the notebook upstairs and began a large file transfer onto my flash drive from the original set of computers I was working on. While that started, I set the notebook up and powered it on to take a look at it. Dell startup screen, Windows XP logo... Nothing wrong yet. This was going to be easy. I figured, "The computer won't boot" probably meant that their iTunes froze up or something. I get that kind of thing all the time. I looked up at the file transfer on the other machine and noticed it hadn't even began to calculate how long it would take. Looking back to the notebook, I was mildly shocked to see everyone's favorite error: The Blue Screen of Death. Alright, maybe she did have a slightly larger problem than her Prince album not playing properly (Who is he anyway?).
This was the message I was presented with:
STOP: c0000218 {registry file failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\Systemroot\System32\Config\SECURITY
or its log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent or not writable.
Now, I've never seen that before in my life. But the mention of 'System32' probably wasn't good. Neither was that registry thing it keeps talking about. I decided to Google it to find out what it all meant. The search really didn't turn up anything too surprising. The solution mostly involved using an XP installation disk to recover the missing or corrupt files. I slapped one in the CD ROM and tried a recovery. Interestingly enough, it didn't work. The recovery actually froze up. This was going to be a tad harder than expected. Not to worry, though. I've never had a problem I couldn't solve. And with the file transfer at .001% compete, I figured I had time.
I decided to try a different trick. Booting back up to the Windows installation disk, I entered the Recovery Console. This is a more powerful tool than the automated system, as it allows for more specific handling of the recovery process. I preformed a chkdsk on the machine (As per M$'s recommendation), and was presented with a message informing me that there were indeed errors to be found. ...That was helpful. So I decided to try a different approach. I copied the missing/damaged file from the CD onto the hard disk, replacing the bad one and rebooted. This time, the notebook was able to make it past the initial error. I was beginning to think that it actually worked. That was short lived.
I was presented with a second blue screen moments later. This one was identical to the first, save for the word "SECURITY" was replaced with "SYSTEM". Aparently, I was in a worse position than I had originally began in. I began searching Google groups and whatnot for another answer, but was mostly unsuccessful. After trying a few other tricks, and attempting to use a special recovery disk that I keep on me, I was forced to inform the woman that her notebook was very dead. I wasn't too thrilled with not being able to solve that problem without rebuilding the machine, but I suppose you can't win every battle. Looking back up at the file transfer, I noted that it was currently holding at 2% complete, and the line of people waiting to tell me aboout their problems was growing. This was going to be a long, long day.