Vista x64 cannot load hive error

Hey guys, I have seen a couple of threads about this issue on various sites but no one seems to have a definitive solution; i was just wondering if anyone here had experienced with (and hopefully fixed) the problem I am having.

I am running Vista x64 on a new system, Gigabyte P35-DS3P, 4x1GB matched dimms, Q6600, Geforce 8800GTX. There is nothing else in the system, just the motherboard, gfx card, processor and ram so in theory it should mean less to cause a problem, but...

The system runs absolutely fine in Vista x64 aside from one strange issue: sometimes internet explorer will plain refuse to connect to a site giving a 404 when firefox or IE7 running in XP in a virtual machine will be fine with it. But the big problem is this: when I reboot the machine I ALWAYS get the following error:

STOP: C0000218 {Registry File Failure}

The registry cannot load the hive (file).
\Systemroot\System32\config\security
or its log or alternate.

It is corrupt, absent or not writeable.


Very ocassionaly, if I reboot a couple of times then I can get into Windows fine but usually I have to go into safe mode and do a system restore a day back. Sometimes this doesnt even work and I have to do it again for it to load properly. There are talks that this is something to do with running 4x1GB dimms but I have tested the dimms using the windows memory checker and there are no errors.

It is driving me mad cos it works so well usually, just this stupid issue with rebooting. If anyone could help I would be REALLY grateful!