Windows 2000 could not start (Loader error 3)

[sysbuilder]

I have a user with a Dell laptop (not sure of the exact model) who recently received the following error message:

Windows 2000 could not start because of an error in the software.

Please report this problem as :

Loader error 3.

Please contact your support person to report this problem.

Prior to booting the laptop and getting that message he received the message upon boot up that his system time was incorrect and to press (F?) to reset or (F?) to continue. He proceeded to boot into windows and corrected the system time. Again, after that change he rebooted and received the error message above.

I can't find anything in the MS Knowledge Base pertaining to "Load error 3". I feel a bit better following a KB article opposed to someone's post I find googling, but, no luck on the MS KB.

I have googled "Load error 3" which gave me some ideas. I am going to have him replace NTLDR first, though, some of the posts claim that did not resolve the problem and to go as far as using FIXBOOT from the recovery console.

Outside of those suggestions I would think the registry has become corrupt. Does anyone have any recommendations or tools that can quickly resolve a corrupt registry?

Any thoughts would be great. Thanks in advance.

[fizban2]

boot up the laptop using a bart/win PE disk and run a check disk from there, this should determine if there is an corruption on the disk.

More in on BartPE of you aren't familiar

BartPe

[cluberti]

If you can, boot to a recovery console and do a chkdsk /f /r on the boot volume. This can also be caused by corruption in the system hive, which can be repaired as well via chkreg.exe if chkdsk doesn't find any problems.

Edited February 24, 2006 by cluberti

[fizban2]

go with cluberti's option first as it will be faster if you cannot get to the recovery console use the bart pe method, just so used to the laptops and machines my clients sending me that won't even boot properly the bart is the first thing i use

[sysbuilder]

Thanks guys,

The user was able to load a ghost image that was quite out dated, which gave him some stability, however, the old image was made when prior to a domain migration so he wasn't able to connect to many resources on our network. He will be shipping his laptop to me and I will reload it and configure appropriately.

Again, thanks for the suggestions!