911! Need help. Registry_error BSOD.

***FIXED***


OK- This is stupidity on my part...

I go to restart my computer last night. It was taking a long time to restart and I had it with it, so I pushed the power button. It shut down. I pushed it on again a few seconds later, and Windows starts booting as normal, but just as it would normally show the Welcome screen, it gives me a BSOD saying the babbel about windows stopped itself to prevent damage, blah blah blah... the reason: "registry_error".

Now my computer has gone days if not weeks without being restarted, and since the last restart I could have installed a dozen applications, so I cannot pinpoint my registry problem to any of those. I have used a reg cleaner in the past, but I have restarted numerous times since then with no problems.

My first priority is recovering the files that I am hosting before I do a format. Normally I could just throw the drive into another rig and pull the files off with no problem, but as you can see with the specs in my sig, I have an onboard raid array.

If I can fix the registry problem- thats cool. But if I can just recover the files that would be alright (computer is in need of fresh reinstall anyway).

What have I tried so far...

"Last known good config". Didn't work.
Another hard drive from another XP rig to boot as the primary (didn't work, froze on the "windows did not start successfully" screen).
I've tried to use recovery console and automated system recovery, but Windows setup wont detect my raid array. I'm going to try booting the nessassary drivers from a floppy to run the system recovery... but I'm not sure what my game plan is.

Any suggestions to solve this problem?

WinXP Pro 2002 build non-sp1/2
The rest of specs are in sig. PLEASE HELP!!!

Once I get the driver I'm going to try this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=3Dkb;EN-US;Q307545

Any other suggestions...?

OK, I try to load the HTP372 drivers from floppy. It reads the disk fine and then asks me what OS driver to install (highpoint raid for win98, 2000, xp). No matter which I choose, I get an error message saying there was a error in TXTSETUP.O.... blah blah blah.

I remember having this problem every singe time I want to do anything to my raid array. I've about had it. If anyone can help me out, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

If you have another drive that you can do a temporary windows install to and possibly space to back up the files(or simply transfer them over the network) to that would be handy. Run the install and then back up or transfer the files. If windows will not read the files, try this application after installing the RAID driver.

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

It's freeware and can recover files when there are no hardware problems.

If there's no possibility of a spare HDD, try have you tried safe mode or text mode safe mode. Failing that, the registry repair looks to be the best bet.

Is your raid drivers up to date, yadda yadda...

Floppy disks go bad, old drivers have bugs... so you can try to obtain new drivers (from the manufacturer's website) and put them on another disk (apparently, do all this at another machine) and then see if that works...

It very well could!

Well I think its fixed. I had to perform 5 pages of M$ tech support to manually restore the original registry, and every time I went to the recovery console, I had to manually install raid drivers. So my computer was down for almost 24 hours. Sheesh. It's this stuff that makes people snap and make the switch...

Sorry I didn't catch this sooner, I could have helped you with the registry restore.

Glad to hear you got it back up though.

Comptuers... learn to love them, can quickly hate them, are now a part of our lives, and over time learn how to deal with them...

Glad your computer lives forever more once again.

I was seriously considering selling all my parts on the classifieds and getting whole new from newegg. Whenever I have problems like this I ALWAYS have difficulties with the raid drivers. Windows doesn't like them, and if they are not arranged on the floppy perfectly, windows will read the driver fine but then scream errors when it tries installing. What was a pain was that I had to enter recovery console like 6 times, and each time I had to manually load the drivers... grrr... I have no floppy drive... so loading drivers for windows to see an actual partition is impossible. I ended up having to drive to my aunts (20 minutes away) and picking up an old folding rig I left over her house just so I could use the floppy in it .

When I finally got windows running, all registry was fresh, but programs and files were there (none worked of course). This included my wireless keyboard drivers... so my mouse and keyboard failed to work. I had to bum an old keyboard and mouse from my little brother. After that I had to go back to DOS to manually copy and delete certain registry on the computer so windows could actually recognize a recent system restore point. Then I had to restore. Ugh... what a disaster. Well everything works now. I learned my lesson. DONT PUSH THE POWER BUTTON ANYMORE!

I have a lesson I can throw in... I had TREMENDOUS problems with my RAID setup. It is a speed increase, yes... or even perhaps more stability (if you don't run in the speedy raid setup), however it guarantees that you need the RAID drivers installed to do anything and also, if you need to use a new RAID card, it guarantees that all your old data is TOAST.

Ok, I learned to HATE RAID. However, I learned that RAID cards most likely will see normal drives as normal drives if they are left out of a RAID array. True, I still have to deal with RAID drivers... however for my system drive, it always goes on the motherboard controller. That way, at least I don't have to play "Windows needs your raid drivers yet still might not like them when you need it to" game.

It at least ensures that I can get to recovery console... When it comes time for a reformat, you might want to ask in the storage section if you should unraid your drives or if you should change the setup of your drives. You might gain a lot more in ease of troubleshooting than you would loose in any speed. Besides, as I also learned, not all RAID controllers are equal, you might be better off not RAIDing the drives for speed... bleh, it is complex... but something worth further investigation, so I say.

While we are on the subject of RAID, does anyone know if you can do IDE RAID on the newer board that advertise "onboard SATA RAID"?

Not necessarily. My board is SATA Raid, but has no raid capability with the older drives. I had to buy an addon card for that (of course, the raid card can just support extra drives that are not in a specific array).

SATA is a new way of connecting hard drives using a very small wire instead of the large IDE cable. You need a SATA drive to use the SATA functionality and other than that, it runs like a normal raid array. SATA is really fast compared to the older standard though.

You can get coverters (IDE to SATA), but they are somewhat pricey.

The storage section can give a better definition, and a better overview of this too.

Yeah I know the difference between the two but I was just wondering since most specs are layed out like this:

2 channels Parallel ATA IDE ports
2 channels Serial ATA IDE ports
Supports RAID 0, 1
Supports up to PIO mode 5 & Ultra DMA 100/133

Click to expand...

I'm wondering if both parallel and serial ide support raid or if its just serial. But you answered my question. . Thanks.

From the way that is written, it seems like the RAID specification would only apply to the SATA (since it was listed below that line). However, you could look up other links and specific reviews of that motherboard to be sure.