Steve the IT Tech Guy

This came from the Internet. Here is the Link I copied it from. Thanks Ray!

I have used the Microsoft way a few times and it has saved a ton of time!
If you can’t boot into Windows XP at all because you have one of the following errors, reading this page might help you!

In working with many Windows XP computers over the past couple of years in my shop, I’ve run across a few systems with corrupted registry files. Most of the time, I will get an error similar to the following:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing

or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SOFTWARE

Other times I won’t get an error and the system will just reboot continuously without a blue screen error message. One thing is for certain in all of these problems: I can’t boot into safe mode to fix it!!!!

It is cases like this when we want to manually roll back the registry. Basically, this restores your system’s registry files to a point where they might have actually been stable, or at least less destructive than they are now. This process is not the same as system restore, mainly because we’re only replacing the registry files, where system restore also replaces other system files.

Continue reading Restore Windows XP registry if you can’t boot