cannot load window, blue screen of death

Recently I was trying to update music on my ipod when my computer shut down windows and displayed the blue screen that tells you to shut off the machine. Now everytime I try to start it up again it goes to that screen. I tried booting to safemode and using a system restore point which seemed like it was going to work, but during the restore process, the blue screen of death popped up again. Now I can't access safe mode either. Can you help me? I could simply reformat, but there is data on the machine that I want.

 

What operating system? Did you note the BSOD code. What happens when you try safe mode? What hardware are you on..specs pls..

 

ok, so I am running windows XP on a Dell system DV051, Bios A03 10-8-05, Intel Pentium 4 3.00GHz, and 1 GB installed Memory.

I tried to boot the machine again so that I could note the BSOD code, and this time something different occurred. First CHKDSK scanned the hard drive and said that the volume is dirty. While it was working a new blue screen with a stop code came up. The message was as follows:

stop: C0000218 {registry file failure}
the registry cannot load the hive (file):
\systemroot\system32\config\security
or its log or alternate
it is corrupt. absent, or not writable

When I try to boot to safemode, the list of files comes up that fills the screen and then nothing further happens.

I have the recovery console on my machine (not sure if this is useful or not)


also, I was helped in the malware forum about a month ago to clean my machine after an infection. Not sure if this is related, but here is the thread:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=193907

 

g'day n9643750

have done a bit of research on this stop error and the majority of the fixes point to this Microsoft site which gives you a step by step guide on how to repair you registry and correct this issue " http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545 ".
hope this helps good luck.

 

so I tried the procedure on the microsoft page to replace the corrupted registry files, but booting the computer still ends with a blue screen. Any ideas for how I can pull my data off of the drive before reformatting?