Please Help! Our power went out due to a severe thunderstorm and now one of my computers is pulling the below error when I try to bootup!

Stop: C0000218 (Registry File Failure)
The Registry cannot load the Hive file
\systemroot\system32\config\default
or its log or alternate
it is corrupt, absent or not writable

Can anyone help me with this problem, I work on computer in my spare time but I have never seen this error before. What is it? and how do I fix it? Will I have to do a complete format and reinstall?

Thank you for all you help in this matter.

KingD

The first thing I'd try is to hit the F8 key
use after POST (memory count up, system BIOS screen)
so that you get to the XP boot menu. From there you
should see an option such as "Last known good configuration".

If that fails, follow these instructions:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307545

Yeah, that is the very first thing that I tried, but it still pulled the error that I listed. So now I will try the Instructions in the link that you provided. Thank you, and I will let you know if it worked.