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I bought a new Dell laptop last year and its been working really well for me until today. I tried starting it and it brought me to the select an option screen where it asks to start in safe mode, safe mode with network, last known good settings, or just regular start. It doesn't matter what option I choose it always starts to load windows but then goes to blue screen of death.

Blue Screen of Death wrote: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.

Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete.
Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistance.

Sounds like some kind of memory erasing virus to me. I don't think I've downloaded anything weird lately and I regularly use anti-virus programs etc to keep it clean.

So, any smart people have an idea of what to do?

Sounds more like either a corrupted Windows Install <likely> or a bad hard drive <less likely>.

Can you system restore, or reinstall Windows?

Lets start with some simple fixes and hope its a small issue.

If you still have a windows CD. Put it in and boot to it. When setup starts choose Recovery. When you get to command prompt type CHKDSK. If CHKDSK reports file sectors run CHKDSK again only this time type CHKDSK /R instead. When its done, reboot and see if that corrects your problem.

The CHKDSK /R appears to have worked, and it loaded windows just fine. I'll keep you posted in case something else pops up. Thanks Gid.

Glad to help, good luck.