Power Failure
A power failure or some other unexpected shutdown event may cause a corrupted registry hive. To determine whether this is the cause of the issue, look for event ID 6008 entries. Event ID 6008 entries indicate that there was an unexpected shutdown. In this case, some process may have been in the process of modifying part of the registry hive, and the computer lost power before that change could be completed. This leaves the registry hive in an inconsistent state. On restart, when the operating system tries to load the registry hive, it may find data in that registry hive that it cannot interpret, and you may receive one of the error messages that is included in the "Summary" section of this article.
File Corruption and Faulty Hardware
Other files may be corrupted. You must determine whether only the registry hives are corrupted or whether other files (system and data) are corrupted. If corruption is not limited to registry hives, the corruption may be a result of faulty hardware. This hardware may include anything that is involved in writing to a disk, such as the following:
• The random access memory (RAM)
• The cache
• The processor
• The disk controller
If you suspect faulty hardware, the hardware vendor must thoroughly investigate the condition of all computer components.