registry file failure

My wife ran malwarebytes on the pc a few days ago and it hung up and stopped. She tried again last night in Safe Mode and got these messages:
STop function 0000218
Registry file Failure
Registry cannot load HIV file
System/root/system32/configuration/software/ or its log or alternate
it is corrupt,absent, or not writeable.

She read these messages to me over the phone so I am not sure if I have quoted them correctly or not.

Some googling reveals that that there are ways to fix this, but they seem quite time consuming. Is there any software that will analyze and fix automatically - some kind of registry repair program?

Any hints on how to fix this problem will be appreciated.

Furthermore, is this caused by malware or is it just a glitch? The machine is old and if the hard drive is failing I would not be surprised.

Again, any advice before I dig into this over the weekend will be greatly appreciated.

 

Hi,

I think the first thing I would do is run a chkdsk /r on the Windows drive to rule out file corruption. If you can still get into safe mode then go to My Computer, right-click the C: drive and select Properties. Under the Tools tab select Error Checking. Tick both boxes in the window that opens, it will schedule for next reboot. Reboot, let chkdsk run then try starting in normal mode. See if it starts or you get a different error.

 

Are you sure about that; isn't it saying "hive" file? :cool

Anyway, during startup, can you try booting into "Last Known Good Configuration"?