XP Home won't start

[OMLAGIRL]

Windows XP home won't start. I receive the We're sorry error message with the
options to restart in safe mode etc. I tried restarting to the last known
good config but that didn't work. I was able to start in safe mode and then
I did a system restore. That worked, I was able to start XP and work on the
computer but once I shut the computer down and tried to start XP again I get
the orginal error message and I have to do the restore all over again.
I've tried going into system recovery (F10) when the computer starts up but
then I received the error message The registry cannot load the hive file
\systemroot\system32\config\security or its log or alternate. So once again
I did the system restore, it worked, I shut the computer down tried to start
XP again and received the original error again.
Any ideas what is going on? Anyway I can repair this when I have XP up and
running?
Thanks for any and all help!

[bbeard67]

Have you tried using windows update while you have it up and running
update to Windows service pack 2

[OMLAGIRL]

I have done the XP update and created a restore point after the update completed. A few days later this problem started happening. When I tried to restore to that point the restore didn't work. I had to restore to a day before I did the update. Should I try the XP update again or is that what is causing the problem?
Thanks for your quick reply

[bbeard67]

Some program is trying to write to the registry during shutdown
causing it to be corrupted.

Try this first:
Right click my computer
click properties
click hardware tab
click device manager button
doubleclick disk drives
right click on hard drive
click properties
click the policies tab
notice the warning on "enable write cahing on the disk"
uncheck this box it could be keeping running programs from completing writes to the registry on shutdown.
repeat for each hard drive if you have more than one.


A more complicated solution if above doesn't work
Try closing all running apps before shutting down
if it restarts normally you will have to determine which program is causing the problem. even use ctrl all delete to be sure all non system programs are closed.

[waresoft]

It sounds as if your security registry hive is corrupted or it is missing.

If that is the case you may never get it started.

You can do a repair install, it will usually fix a problem like this.

Here are instructions on how to do a repair install:

Windows XP Repair Install Instructions