When starting up or rebooting Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 or other version of Windows Server system, possibly after system failure or unexpected server down, the server does not boot and start properly.

Instead, a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) is presented, or the system may automatically load the recovery console, or worst, the system keeps restarting in the loop. You can press F8 key during the initial system boot up and select “Disable Automatic Restart on Failure” to get the error message on the BSoD, which indicates:

BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO

Normally, the technical information will also say that the stop error is 0x00000074.

The Bad System Config Info error is caused by corrupt SYSTEM hive in the registry, or some critical registry keys and values are not present.

To resolve the issue, try the boot the system with “Last Known Good Configuration”. To do so, press F8 key on initial system startup to load the Advanced Boot Options menu. Then, select Last Known Good Configuration.

Alternatively, if you have system image backup, you can try to restore it through Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). To access WinRE, boot up with the Windows installation DVD, or if supported, press F8 key during initial boot up and select Repair Your Computer.

If the problem is not fixed, try to load the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) and then open a Command Prompt, then run the following commands, where X is the system drive on the Windows Server system when loaded in WinRE (depending on how you load the WinRE, the drive letter may be different):

md X:\Windows\System32\config\OldRegistry
copy X:\Windows\System32\config\*.* X:\Windows\System32\config\OldRegistry\
copy /y X:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\*.* X:\Windows\System32\config\

The commands above replace the registry hives of DEFAULT, SYSTEM, SAM, SECURITY, and SOFTWARE with the backed up copies. You can unplug the hard disk drive or virtual hard disk file in the case of virtual machine, and connect it to another working computer to make the changes too.

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