Windows 8 Bad System Config Info on start up

[Kathy W]

I am running Windows 8 on a Dell XBS 8500.
There have been no recent changes to the PC.

When trying to boot up the PC, I am receiving the message "Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart". I very quickly see a message regarding the bad_system_config_info.

If I run the refresh, I receive the message "there was a problem refreshing your PC. No changes were made.

I was able to get to a command prompt and chkdsk returned no errors.

I was also able to view the c:\windows\system32\logfiles\srt\srttrail.txt file and so no issues in there.

I cannot start windows and was unable to run in safe mode. I just keep coming back to the options to refresh, restore, advanced options, etc.

To make matters worse, I never made a backup disk or restore disk.

Any advise at this point would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Josephur]

This usually points to a corrupted system registry. Do you have a Live CD such as Knoppix you can boot from and look to see if there's a registry backup?
If you cannot create a bootable CD, can you access a command prompt from the advanced options?

Usually registry backups are located at C:\windows\system32\config\RegBack

You can attempt to copy these files into your system32\config folder, and overwrite the old corrupt ones (MAKE A BACKUP OF THEM FIRST).

This may get you able to boot.