"Snuffy "Hub Cap" McKinney" wrote in message ...
I have XP Home on a laptop and it will not boot. Gets this errors. I don't have the XP Home DVD, but have another XP SP1 DVD. But when I hit F8 and select 'boot from CD/DVD' it doesn't. Any ideas how to solve this?

STOP: c000021S {Registry file failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file);
\SystemRoot\System32\config\SOFTWARE
or its log or alternate,
It is corrupt, absent or not writable,

Also is there a way to get to the BIOS menu? F8 doesn't give that choice.

Thanks.

PS -- I checked at this page, but OS was pre-installed.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

"How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting"
Warning Do not use the procedure that is described in this article if your computer has an OEM-installed operating system. The system hive on OEM installations creates passwords and user accounts that did not exist previously. If you use the procedure that is described in this article, you may not be able to log back into the recovery console to restore the original registry hives.