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General discussion

One Crash After Another!!!!

by roopie Nov 23, 2004 9:35PM PST

Over the past week or two my XP Pro SP2 machine has crashed repeatedly. I have repaired it through either the Recovery Console or the Repair option from the XP install CD. It works for a few hours but then it crashes again and the cycle repaets itself. The first crash was a registry hive error which resulted in a memory dump:

"STOP: c0000218 (Registry File Failure) \system root\System32\Config\software or its log or alternate. It is corrupt, absent, or not writable."

I followed Microsoft's instructions for repairing this error by using Recovery Console and copying files to the system32\config folder, and was up and running for a few hours again. But then the next crash was ISASS.exe error regarding a corrupt password:

"ISASS.exe system error when trying to return a password..."

II managed to get the system up and running again. I scanned for worms, viruses, and spyware ad nauseum, but nothing turned up. Once I shut down and rebooted the system crashed once again, and I got the error that my user profile was corrupted. I got a very generic-looking login screen and a very generic login profile with none of my settings. I did another repair from the install CD and rebooted, and guess what? Crashed again. Now I am back where I started with the original registry hive error and a memory dump:

"STOP: c0000218 (Registry File Failure) \system root\System32\Config\software or its log or alternate. It is corrupt, absent, or not writable."

This is extremely frustrating. Does anyone have a clue as to why my machine is so unstable? Hardware? Software? What?!? Please help! Thank you.

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