AVG meets Blue Screen o' Death

I bought a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop five months ago. When the Norton anti-virus ran out, I decided to come here to find out about protection options since the anti-spyware stuff I put on my desktop from here worked pretty well .

After reading the forum information, I downloaded AVG, and it installed correctly. It got the most recent updates and proceeded to scan the laptop without finding any problems. I disabled the Norton AV, shut down, and went to school.

My wife came home, turned on the computer, and was met by Blue Screen o Death #1 :

c0000218
registry cannot load the hive (file)
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE
or its log or alternate

She left the computer on for when I got home to examine.

I tried rebooting, but got the same message.

I tried rebooting in safe mode. Safemode searched through the drivers, paused for a moment, then gave me the same message.

So I started the registration process here.

This morning I thought I'd try again on the laptop (why not) and got a new message from safe mode, Blue Screen o Death #2:

A problem has been deteted and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:
Disable or uninstall any anti-virus, disk-defrag., or backup utilities. Check your hard drive config., and check for any updated drivers. Run chkdsk /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart comp.
STOP: 0x00000024 (0x001902FE, 0x001902FE, 0xF8A14B6C, 0xF8A14868, 0xF83B3746)
Ntfs.sys -- address F83B3746 base at F83A2000,
Datestamp 41107 eea

And it dumps some physical memory. Thing is, if I'm getting just blue screens, how do I do any of that? Any help is very much appreciated, especially since Dell's tech support is having some difficulties of its own right now and won't let me log in. Thank you.

 

As a start, I would uninstall Nortons completely. Go thru Add/Remove in the Control Panel to uninstall it. I would also run the (SymNRT) Norton Removal Tool here, http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4749

Let us know if it changes anything.

Steve

 

I appreciate the idea, but if I could get at the Control Panel, I wouldn't be here. I can't boot up Windows at all, even in safe mode. It is in process of booting that I get these error messages.

 

Oooooops, my mistake.

Follow the steps here, http://kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_sys32.htm it's the only way I know

Recovery Console info, http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307654

Steve

 

Great! Thanks. I am contacting Dell to get a copy of the CD so that I can do the Recovery Console. In the meantime, do you have any idea what I did wrong that caused this problem? I wouldn't imagine that installing AVG would do it, or that merely disabling Norton's AV would. Any guesses?

 

Actually, I was just speaking with Dell in more detail who had me run some diagnostics.... It seems the problem is a hard disk failure, and even after restoring the hive, the problem would occur again - perhaps even within two weeks. So they're nicely sending me a new hard drive and the necessary CD. ... I think that means you'll be hearing from me again in a few days..... Thanks a lot!

 

OK. Glad you got it worked out with Dell.

Something I have gotten accustomed to doing with my laptop (Compaq) is take the battery out when I am not using it. They can heat up quite a bit just sitting there when you have the laptop plugged in, it's really not good for the battery and heat can cause HDD failure.

Just something to think about. If you need any help let us know.

Steve

 

Thanks again. Your instructions got me back in to the computer system long enough to back everything up before replacing the hard drive.

 

Good deal.

Steve