After a Windows Update the lovely “Blue Screen of Death” appeared on one of our servers. Frantic to find a solution, “Boot to the last known working configuration” wasn’t working. A system restore was a last resort option.

Here’s what the error consisted of:

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.

To resolve the issue I:

1. Boot to the Windows 2008 Server Install DVD
2. Click “Repair Computer” on the second screen
3. Open a command prompt on the second or third prompt
4. Change directory to C:\Windows\System32\Config\
5. Rename “SOFTWARE” to “SOFTWARE.BAK”
6. Copy “RegBack\SOFTWARE” to that directory
7. Reboot

This restored the SOFTWARE registry to its previous state before the Windows Update. I then had a pending list of Windows Updates to install again. But I’ll leave that for another day for now to see if anyone else is having issues.

#blue-screen-of-death, #microsoft, #registry, #update, #windows, #windows-2008-server